MINI EPISODE: The Sitcomification of Holly Brown

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Introduction – 0:00

 

BLAIR HODGES: Hey, welcome to Relationscapes. I'm Blair Hodges, an independent journalist in Salt Lake City. It's nice to be with you again on another mini episode.

Okay, if you're looking for another podcast to binge right now, I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is there's an amazing new show. It's called Everybody Knows But Me, which I highly recommend. You might have even already heard of it. The bad news is you can't really do a full-blown binge yet because they've only released four episodes so far.

The creator of this podcast is Holly Brown. She's a marketing specialist with Tink Media. She's also a stand-up comedian, and her podcast is kind of blowing my mind right now. I'll read you the description, and then we'll dive right in with Holly Brown.

"When she was just 17, Holly Brown's dad was dying of cancer. It looked like life couldn't get more traumatic until her dad dropped a bombshell—or two bombshells, really. Twin brothers that her entire family kept secret. Holly was the only one who didn't know they existed.

After his death left her with more questions than answers, Holly sets out to uncover how a secret this big could be hidden and why the sitcoms that raised her were often the only way to make sense of a life stranger than TV."

Holly Brown joins us to talk about Everybody Knows But Me.

 

Sitcom Trivia – 01:21

 

BLAIR HODGES: Holly Brown, welcome to Relationscapes.

HOLLY BROWN: Hi! Thank you so much for having me, Blair. I'm so excited.

BLAIR HODGES: I'm gonna start off with a little bit of trivia about sitcoms.

HOLLY BROWN: Okay.

BLAIR HODGES: You love sitcoms.

HOLLY BROWN: Love is an understatement.

BLAIR HODGES: Yes, which is why your new podcast is built around your love of sitcoms. I'm wondering if you know the first TV sitcom. That's your first question. Do you know the first TV sitcom?

HOLLY BROWN: Oh gosh!

BLAIR HODGES: I did not know this either. I looked this up. It was in 1947. It's called Mary Kay and Johnny.

HOLLY BROWN: Never!

BLAIR HODGES: Obviously not a hit, right? But good enough to continue the genre.

Okay, so I'm gonna go through the decades and see if you can name a sitcom from each of the decades.

HOLLY BROWN: Okay. We'll see how oriented I am for the decades, because I feel like I know them, but I don't know where to place them all the time.

BLAIR HODGES: All right, 1950s. What do you think?

HOLLY BROWN: I mean, Leave It to Beaver comes to mind.

BLAIR HODGES: Leave It to Beaver.

HOLLY BROWN: But also, would we consider The Andy Griffith Show a sitcom?

BLAIR HODGES: That's a little bit later.

HOLLY BROWN: Oh, okay, never mind.

BLAIR HODGES: So the 50s—I Love Lucy was the main one in the 50s. The top show of the 1950s was I Love Lucy. What was the top sitcom in the 60s?

HOLLY BROWN: I already said The Andy Griffith Show, so I'm gonna lean on that one. Because if it's not the 50s, it's gotta be the 60s.

BLAIR HODGES: The top one in the 60s was The Dick Van Dyke Show.

HOLLY BROWN: Oh, right!

BLAIR HODGES: I don't think I've ever seen an episode of that.

HOLLY BROWN: You know, for some reason, the ones from that era, when all the shows were named after the lead actors of the show, I think my brain separates them sometimes as sitcoms less. You know? It's like, “Oh, this is their life.” And I'm like, “Nope, that's a sitcom.” It was just their name—their actual name—but a fictionalized life, you know?

BLAIR HODGES: Yes. Into the 70s. What have you got?

HOLLY BROWN: I'm gonna say Happy Days.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay.

HOLLY BROWN: I'm also gonna say The Mary Tyler Moore Show, because we're on this theme. 

BLAIR HODGES: Yes!

Another one, late 70s, was M*A*S*H.

HOLLY BROWN: M*A*S*H. Wow. Okay.

BLAIR HODGES: This is when M*A*S*H came out. And I never watched M*A*S*H.

HOLLY BROWN: Neither did I. And I feel like we really missed a huge cultural moment, Blair.

BLAIR HODGES: Because as soon as the theme song came on, I was like, “Change the channel. This is a really sad show.”

HOLLY BROWN: Yes! And also, I think it was a really sad show.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, I didn't give it a shot.

All right, into the 80s. Now we're getting closer to us now.

HOLLY BROWN: Got it. Okay, I'm gonna do Family Ties. Who's the Boss?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, Who's the Boss? is a late-80s one. You still haven't named the top one from the 80s, though.

HOLLY BROWN: Shoot. The top one. Oh, The Cosby Show!

BLAIR HODGES: The Cosby Show was top for, like, five years. You should know this other one. 

HOLLY BROWN: And Cheers!

BLAIR HODGES: Yes, Cheers. And you have a connection to Cheers.

HOLLY BROWN: I do! Kelsey Grammer, huge presence in my life, whether he knows it or not. [laughs]

BLAIR HODGES: And not because of his Sideshow Bob character. We'll talk about Kelsey a little bit later on.

Okay, into the 90s. What have you got?

HOLLY BROWN: So the biggest show of the 90s has got to be Frasier. I mean, do I know that that's the most-watched show? No. But it was the most-awarded show. 

BLAIR HODGES: I didn't know that.

HOLLY BROWN: So I will lean on Frasier, for sure. Seinfeld, even though that started in the late 80s. We've got Full House. We've got, you know, Step by Step.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. All those TGIF shows are in there.

HOLLY BROWN: The list goes on. I could name one-season shows too.

BLAIR HODGES: And then they've got Friends, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was really big.

And then into the 2000s. Did you watch any sitcoms through the 2000s?

HOLLY BROWN: I mean, I absolutely did. You know, Malcolm in the Middle. I think that one came out around ’99, but carried through the early 2000s.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, I think of that as more of a 2000s show.

HOLLY BROWN: Yeah. The intro alone by They Might Be Giants is guiding us into a different era.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

HOLLY BROWN: But that decade for me was a little more driven by—I was watching syndicated sitcoms from the 90s at that time, even though it was the 2000s for you. But I was also watching shows very much catered to my age, like The Lizzie McGuire Show at the time.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay.

HOLLY BROWN: You know, more Disney-centric. Those ones, I'm trying to think of.

You know, Friends was still so popular.

BLAIR HODGES: There wasn't a ton of sitcoms with your classic studio audience. So this is when shows like Arrested Development and Scrubs and The Office and Parks and Rec were really big—

HOLLY BROWN: Oh, How I Met Your Mother.

BLAIR HODGES: Yes. Okay, so How I Met Your Mother was more studio audience-y. And then The Big Bang Theory, which I never watched.

HOLLY BROWN: Did you know, actually, Blair, How I Met Your Mother did not have a studio audience despite having a laugh track?

BLAIR HODGES: They just had the laugh track. Ewww, we'll talk about that soon. I want to talk about laugh tracks in a minute. [laughter]

So now we're in the 2010s. Does New Girl have a laugh track? I've never seen it.

HOLLY BROWN: It doesn't. But I think that was kind of a very, very distinct shift. We're in the era of, yeah, no laugh tracks.

BLAIR HODGES: Same for Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

HOLLY BROWN: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: And then we're up into the 2020s. Abbott Elementary is the top one. And I don't believe that has a laugh track either. That's more in the vein of The Office and Parks and Recreation.

HOLLY BROWN: Absolutely. Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay. Well, you did good. You did better than me. I had to look a lot of this stuff up.

Did you have a personal favorite of any of these sitcoms?

HOLLY BROWN: One hundred percent. 

BLAIR HODGES: Which one was your favorite?

HOLLY BROWN: You know, it's funny. When your parent works on one, you feel like you have to say that one. And my dad, growing up, I remember him sending me off to school being like, “Tell all your friends to watch Frasier,” or “Tell all your friends' parents to watch Frasier.”

BLAIR HODGES: “If they get a call from the people at the Nielsen ratings, tell them it's Frasier!”

HOLLY BROWN: Because there was always this weird, slight, unspoken rivalry of Seinfeld versus Frasier in my household, I never watched Seinfeld at all until I was an adult.

But my personal favorite was Boy Meets World. Absolutely. By far.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay.

HOLLY BROWN: So good. It just spoke to me. It hit me at the exact perfect time.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, Boy Meets World's a classic. That was our era. What year did you graduate high school?

HOLLY BROWN: 2010.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, so I'm actually a decade ahead of you. But Boy Meets World was right in the mix for me too.

HOLLY BROWN: It was, yeah. And we lived in this era of reruns. So you could be watching a current episode of Boy Meets World in ’99 or 2000, and then probably next week watch an episode from season one of Boy Meets World, you know?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, exactly.

HOLLY BROWN: You got to experience it in a different way where it felt like you were watching an era of a show in your age, but you weren't.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

HOLLY BROWN: But you still got to feel that way.

 

What Makes a Sitcom? – 07:33

 

BLAIR HODGES: I'm wondering how you feel about sitcoms now, because I have to say, I'll watch classics and stuff, but if a new show were to come out with a laugh track, I can already tell I wouldn't want to watch it. And I don't know if that's snobbishness or what the deal is, but a new show with a laugh track would probably be a no-go from the beginning for me.

And I wonder how you feel about that.

HOLLY BROWN: I almost feel like we used to have sitcoms on all the channels. We had CBS, we had NBC sitcoms, we had ABC sitcoms. And then it became a thing where it felt like, in the aughts, the only sitcoms with laugh tracks were on CBS. And they were all very similar types of sitcoms like The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, Mom.

And that wasn't my lane. That lane of sitcom didn't speak to me as much as the NBC and ABC sitcoms did.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

HOLLY BROWN: And then I just felt like we kind of had a split of, sitcoms with laugh tracks are going to cater toward audiences that like those shows I necessarily might not have liked as much, and then sitcoms without laugh tracks catered more toward, okay, we're gonna leave the laugh track and really lean into the smartness.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

HOLLY BROWN: So it was like, the way Frasier really somehow geniusly toed the line of hyper intelligent content, and anybody could laugh at it. I don't think we've hit that since. I felt like there was a fracture, and then it became two different audiences.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. One of them is more for mass appeal.

And sitcoms in general were “situation comedy,” right? That's where that comes from. It's a set cast of characters who engage in their hijinks and stuff week after week. Things kind of reset every week. Sometimes there will be a plot that carries through multiple episodes, but not a whole bunch of character development.

And it's not really thinky. It's kind of popcorn-type TV, right? And I also think sitcom writers really went for mass appeal.

HOLLY BROWN: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: It had to be safe for advertisers. It had to be a familiar formula. And I think that bumps up against the complexity of real life. This is where it's so interesting with your podcast, where you're talking about your own life and you're kind of rebooting it as its own sitcom in the context of your show.

It works so well because your family story has so much trauma in it, but then you're shoehorning it into this genre that it doesn't really fit in. And I think it hits even harder for that. You're using the genre of a sitcom. I don't know if you meant to critique sitcoms, but I think your podcast does that.

HOLLY BROWN: You know, I can't say that I didn't mean to critique them, because I love them so much. But I do find the world so fascinating because sitcoms couldn't exist without taking the real archetypes in human life that we all experience and live every day.

And if we're a cast of characters, which character are you in your life?

And then sitcoms just take that and simplify it even further so they can play around a little more, so everything's a little more low stakes. But it's all rooted in these real roles we all experience. So I just find that dichotomy fascinating, of like, I can be relating to something on screen that is actually so unrelatable to my life.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

HOLLY BROWN: Because I'm like, “Yeah, I'm just like this character who failed his math test.” Meanwhile, my parents are screaming behind me and the house is on fire and I'm the black sheep of my family. [laughs]

BLAIR HODGES: Yes. There's an escapism to sitcoms too, right? They confront problems. Especially in the TGIF ones, the familiar narrative arc is somebody gets into some trouble, they get their comeuppance, and then in the end you've got Danny Tanner sitting on the bed talking to D.J.

“Hey, Deej, let's talk—”

HOLLY BROWN: Yes.

BLAIR HODGES: So there's escapism happening, but there's also this interesting morality-tale thing happening as well. It's like escapist morality tales, which seems like those two things wouldn't necessarily mix together, I guess.

HOLLY BROWN: Right? Yeah, that's a really interesting way to put it because, like you said, especially the TGIF ones, they were known for “very special episodes.” And sometimes those special episodes were so like, “Okay, it's sweeps week. We get it. Let's have Shawn join a cult.”

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, yeah. Or let's have Punky Brewster's friend lock herself in a refrigerator.

HOLLY BROWN: Right! [laughter] It's these insane premises, but I think because they could also do that, they could dip their toe into these darker places because we trusted the show was going to wrap up in 22 minutes.

 

Everybody Knows But Me – 12:00

 

BLAIR HODGES: Your podcast has got me thinking about all this—about why the escapism of those sitcoms appealed to me, why it doesn't appeal to me as much anymore. I'd rather watch The Bear, where they're screaming at each other, which is also kind of terrible, than some of these other shows.

But also, after the election this year, guess what I did? I binged the entire run of Who's the Boss?

HOLLY BROWN: Really?

BLAIR HODGES: And I couldn't watch The Pitt because it was too much like real life. I needed Tony Danza at that moment.

HOLLY BROWN: You know, honestly, cut that line out. Clip it. Put that up somewhere: “In my life, I needed Tony Danza.”

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

HOLLY BROWN: I mean, that's how I kind of felt my whole life. When I was in the middle of things, sometimes I felt like I lived in two zones, which is what I'm trying to do with this podcast. I needed comedy to escape what was happening at home. I was obsessed with comedy because I needed to laugh.

And then sometimes you'd have those moments where you want to sit in your sadness and almost acknowledge that it's real. Like, okay, I am trying to escape this all the time, but I need to remind myself this is really happening so I can figure out what to do next.

And so those were the moments. I lived in two worlds of sitcoms only, and then I would watch the saddest movies, like Steel Magnolias, on repeat. And I just felt fractured in that way, like I needed comedy, but I sometimes needed real life too. Just comedy a little more. Always comedy a little more.

BLAIR HODGES: And this is what your podcast does.

So the podcast is called Everybody Knows But Me, and it tells your family's story. And the genre of the podcast is kind of a narrative show, like a story you might hear on This American Life, you know? Kind of telling a story with music and sounds and stuff, even some investigative journalism because you're interviewing people and finding some stuff out.

But then it also includes clips from this fake sitcom that you all have produced that's about your family, as though your family was a sitcom. And it's complete with the studio audience laughing at things, nonstop wisecracks, like everybody has to have a wisecrack.

Okay, actually, I have a clip here. This is from your “coming soon” teaser, so this will help set up the show a little bit here.

Clip from "Everybody Knows But Me": After all, we kinda looked the part, with all the tried-and-true archetypes. The wild-child younger brother. The smarty-pants older sister.

"Technically, in Dante's Inferno, the deepest circle of hell is a frozen wasteland." 

The quiet, collected mom.

“Holly, would you please take that blowtorch away from your brother?”

And then there was me, the middle child, trying to hold everything together with jokes and some pretty aggressive problem solving.

“Are we trading Top Ramen for tossed salad and scrambled eggs?”

BLAIR HODGES: So this is wild. Your family was the prototypical white American sitcom family.

HOLLY BROWN: I mean, we had mom, dad, very boisterous dad, kind mom, stay-at-home mom, older sister that fit a very classic older-sister archetype, myself as the middle child, and then the wild younger brother.

And I think that's something I didn't touch on earlier about sitcoms. People see what they want to see. They know these roles exist, and so they're just going to hope people fill the roles because they get to see them all the time in sitcoms.

And I kind of had to self-analyze about my own family when I'm trying to understand how people in my life didn't know certain things were going on. That's another lens that helped me understand it, because people see what they want to see. When you fit a role for people, that's really comforting to them.

BLAIR HODGES: I related hard because I'm also a middle child. So we're both middle children, which is the best in birth order. I think every study has proven that. People don't need to look it up. Just take my word for it.

But I wondered how serious you were, though, when you're talking about feeling like your family's life was like a sitcom. Sometimes you say that almost literally, and that might be for effect in the show. How big of an idea really was that for you at the time as a kid?

HOLLY BROWN: I think because of who my dad was, it felt really big for those years—the years before, I would say, the massive stuff started happening. My dad was this larger-than-life character. And he also worked on movie sets and TV show sets, and then I would go to them.

So it's like seeing your dad interact with, say, George Clooney in real life. Your brain is like, “Yeah, he's just like that guy who plays an actor on a show.” He was an actor before he worked behind the scenes. So it was just living in this world where anything was possible.

You could wake up one day and my dad would take us on a scavenger hunt to look for a troll in the park that didn't exist. He built these worlds that made sitcoms and Hollywood feel pretty close to home.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

HOLLY BROWN: You know, both with his hands and with his mind.

 

When Your Dad Is Dying – 17:00

 

BLAIR HODGES: Right. People who listen to the show will find out things start to spiral. There's a lot of verbal abuse in the home, alcoholism. He had this darker side, this more difficult side, and then he gets diagnosed with cancer.

How old were you when he was diagnosed?

HOLLY BROWN: I was around 12 when he got diagnosed.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay. I was 14 or 15 when my dad got diagnosed with brain cancer, which was terminal. Did they present it to you at the time as, “He's got terminal cancer”?

HOLLY BROWN: They did. And, you know, it's so different than what I imagine you experienced with—because I listened to you talk about that on a previous episode. Certain cancers are aggressive, and they come hard and fast, and it's brutal. And it's such a unique experience to have that go quickly.

And then it's also a unique experience to have that prolonged over years.

BLAIR HODGES: He lived for—was it seven years?

HOLLY BROWN: Yeah, it was seven, almost eight years after a stage-four cancer diagnosis.

BLAIR HODGES: A year was pretty brutal.

HOLLY BROWN: I chalk it up sometimes to him having the best health insurance ever from working in TV. He really did. I just remember being like, “Damn. My life's falling apart, but goddamn do we got good health insurance.”

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And at some point it almost becomes unreal. I remember there were times even during that one year where everyday life keeps going. This person's dying, but you're still going to school. There's so much that's still happening.

HOLLY BROWN: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: So I really related to that. And I was trying to wrap my head around experiencing that for years at a time rather than just one year. It almost starts to seem unreal that this person's going to die.

HOLLY BROWN: One hundred percent. I feel like by the third time a doctor tells you, “You need to prepare yourself. He probably doesn't have much time left,” I remember so viscerally feeling like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.” Just being like, “Okay, somebody gonna tell this guy that my dad's invincible or what?”

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, yeah.

HOLLY BROWN: You know, he had incredible health insurance. He also had a kind of cancer that was—He had colon cancer. He was diagnosed with stage-four colon cancer. And while obviously I can't speak to him now and really find out those nitty-gritty details, it was manageable in the beginning if he had decided to pursue certain things like a colostomy bag and other treatments. And his ego prevented him from doing that.

He tried, and then he just couldn't do it. So there were methods that helped prolong his life, though he always knew he was going to die. And that's what got us that extra time, those little bits and pieces of methods. But he would also just as quickly abandon that because his own ego was like, “I don't want to carry this colostomy bag. I don't want to live like this.”

And I can't say what I would do in that situation. But definitely, looking at the time, I was like, “Please do it.” Right?

BLAIR HODGES: Get the bag. Get the bag. Stick around.

Also, didn't he kind of put off going to the doctor to begin with too because he was just so busy? So it's possible there might have even been earlier detection that could have helped as well?

HOLLY BROWN: Absolutely. I think so. There were major signs. Huge signs. He avoided them. He was working on a film at the time, and so his brain was just like, “During hiatus, I'll do it. During hiatus, I'll do it.”

And my dad was a very prideful man and a previously pretentious actor. Egos really, really do a lot to a person when it—

BLAIR HODGES: Even just masculinity stereotypes too, of people who are like, “I don't go to the doctor. I'm a man,” you know?

HOLLY BROWN: Also, I wonder sometimes if—because at this point my parents' marriage was dissolving and they were headed for divorce. Things at home were really bad with abuse and addiction. And I think there's also—and this is something I can relate to at times—this feeling of, “What? I don't know. I just don't want to know right now.”

Even if it's what I think it could be, I'm just going to live in not knowing a little longer. And that can cost a lot. But I can understand why you might think that way.

BLAIR HODGES: The sad thing is the cost is borne by so many more people than the person who's kind of postponing the payment, if that makes sense.

HOLLY BROWN: Yeah, yeah. “Postponing the payment.” That's good. That's a lyric right there.

BLAIR HODGES: You gotta pay the piper.

Speaking of lyrics, your dad did music too. Some of the music on the show came from your dad.

HOLLY BROWN: All of the music you hear in the end credits is my dad's original music. And, you know, it goes back to him being this larger-than-life guy and making these two worlds that I was able to move between.

When I was a kid, life felt amazing. It felt better. It felt like what I saw on TV, which is the epitome of amazing, because he would pull out a guitar. He was an incredible musician. He was self-taught. He could hear anything and then immediately go to the piano and start playing it.

And that just feels magical growing up, when that is at your disposal.

BLAIR HODGES: My dad played the piano. He was not self-taught. He was a classical pianist. He was incredible on the piano. But yeah, he could sit down at Christmas and just play all these Christmas songs and all kinds of stuff. So yeah, I connected with that part of your relationship with your dad too.

 

Surprise Twins – 22:23

 

BLAIR HODGES: Your dad had some secrets as well. We can get spoilery here, and I think I'll just tell listeners right now: any spoiler we give here does not really ruin what the show is doing. There are some big reveals in your podcast, but it's not built around revealing stuff.

So let's talk about what you ended up finding out. After your dad got diagnosed with cancer, he drops a bomb on you.

HOLLY BROWN: Yeah. So my dad gets diagnosed with cancer when I was around 12, and it was stage four. Lots of stuff was happening at home. My parents' marriage was dissolving. There was a lot of addiction at home, a lot of bad stuff that comes with addiction. And things were not—

BLAIR HODGES: He had moved out and moved back in, right? Like, when he got sick, he's like—

HOLLY BROWN: Yeah, he moved back in, I would say, one to two years after his diagnosis, basically when it was like he could no longer work. “We're going anymore. This can be more hands-on.”

And then jump to five years after that—five, almost six. My dad, and I don't mind sharing this at all as a spoiler because it's in the description of the show—

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, that's right.

HOLLY BROWN: Like, my dad sits us down. And the tone felt very different from what he was saying. So my instinct was, “Oh, despite all the other times we've been told he's going to die, this is the actual time he's telling us he's going to die.”

And then what came out of his mouth was that I had twin brothers who were five years old.

And I was so relieved that he didn't say, “I'm dying,” in that moment, that I remember my instinct was to make him feel better and be like, “Oh, that's it.”

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

HOLLY BROWN: I was like, “Oh, thank God.”

BLAIR HODGES: “Are they up in the attic or what?”

HOLLY BROWN: Yeah. I was like, “Do you want to say anything else to unburden yourself if it buys you a little more time? Did you evade your taxes? Anything?”

But it wasn't until, I would say, a couple days or maybe a few weeks later that it really sank in, finding out that not only did my dad hide these boys—which, when I say “hide these boys,” it wasn't like they were in the attic. Yeah, it's always hiding in the attic. He just hid the fact of them from us.

Because actually, he never met them. He was dying, so he chose not to meet them. It's all very complicated.

And not only were they hidden, but everyone else in my whole family knew about it. Myself, my brother, and my sister were the last ones to find out. Everyone else had known from almost day one.

And when you're already dealing with addiction and death and you're 17, you can't handle all of that at once. So you start filing things away. You start being like, “Yeah, bookmark for later,” you know?

BLAIR HODGES: Well, it seemed like not having been told almost hit you harder than the fact that he had these other kids, I think.

HOLLY BROWN: It did. You know, I think in his mind he's like, “Oh my God, my wife's never gonna take me back,” or, “We're gonna get divorced and she's gonna take everything.” My parents never ended up getting divorced because my dad was dying.

But you live in these two zones where he's sitting there going, “I can't tell them. The secret is so big. I have other kids.” And I'm sitting there going, “Wow, how interesting that I could have dealt with that. I know I could have dealt with that.”

What I struggle to deal with is feeling, yet again, like I have zero control over my life, but everyone else does.

And when people decide to keep a secret like that, I have complicated feelings about the betrayal that comes with it, whether or not somebody intentionally wants you to feel betrayed.

But yeah, it felt way bigger that my cousins the same age as me knew about them than I did. Or that they lived 10 minutes down the street from my aunt in another state. Those details felt so much more important than their existence because it just felt like too much to learn at once.

And if you're able to learn something at the time it's happening, I think sometimes it can aid in the processing of it all.

BLAIR HODGES: How do you think it would have been different if you found out after he died? That would've been a whole other thing, right?

HOLLY BROWN: Absolutely. It's hard to say 100%. Instinctively, I do think it might have changed my perception of him a bit.

I'm thankful he told us when he was alive, because to find out something like that after someone dies just leaves so many question marks. And there were already question marks in my life.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

HOLLY BROWN: So it would've left these gaping holes of question marks that I never would've been able to fill because he would've been gone.

But at least being able to find out when he was alive let me know he cared enough. Even if it was too late in the game, even if his ego was still keeping the secret for almost six years, he still wanted to be the one who told us. Even if he got pushed to do it, which I know he did. I think he got pushed to do it a bit by people.

BLAIR HODGES: Oh, interesting.

HOLLY BROWN: I think so.

BLAIR HODGES: Interesting. So he got pushed to do it. Is that gonna be part of the show?

HOLLY BROWN: Yes. We're gonna explore that a bit later. But I also think another factor to that is he was dying, and when death is involved and there are multiple children, that becomes complicated too.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, there were logistical reasons.

HOLLY BROWN: Exactly.

BLAIR HODGES: And he had to have figured that you'd find out too. So maybe part of it was like, “They're gonna find out.” Gosh.

HOLLY BROWN: Yeah. I mean, some of my relatives were spending time with them, and it was probably only a matter of time until one of my cousins my own age sent me a picture of them or something.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

HOLLY BROWN: And so I'm sure there's—I think that's what I like about doing this show. Sitcoms simplify things, and they give you one route: A to B. There's a reason, there's a cause, and there's effect. But real life is like, there are a thousand details and things that make things so complicated.

And so for my dad to hide this secret, it's not as simple as his ego. It's not as simple as he was dying. It's not. There are just so many other factors that make these things more complicated. And I personally need to know all those details, and then I can move on.

BLAIR HODGES: So it sounds like you wish he would've just told you a lot sooner.

HOLLY BROWN: I do, yeah. And you know what? I will say a lot of that is because having your whole family hide something from you makes the thing feel more taboo.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

HOLLY BROWN: You're now delayed in your own processing of something. And I was 17, and I was like, “Oh, okay. I don't even know how to process all of this right now.”

If my dad had just sat me down and told me, “Hey, while your mom and I are separated—you obviously knew we were gonna get divorced—I had this normal thing happen, which is I had a relationship with somebody else,” it makes more sense.

But his fear of what would happen if he said that out loud also made things more complicated. Sometimes the actual facts and reality are hard to say out loud, but they're less complicated than if you don't say them at all.

BLAIR HODGES: Did it give you time to ask him a ton of questions? Because as the episodes go on, and people who listen will find out, you're still discovering things about what was going on and what exactly happened. Did you get much of an opportunity to talk to him about it before he died?

HOLLY BROWN: Nope. Not at all. Not at all.

I think that's another part of when something becomes a secret. It makes you feel ill-prepared to ask questions about it because you're still sitting in the zone of, “I'm angry that people held this from me. I'm just trying to learn all of this as my dad is dying—and actually dying this time.”

And we didn't talk about it. Everything felt very fragile, and my home life felt too fragile. I remember when I found out that information, so much had already happened before that moment that I genuinely would look around sometimes in life and be like, “Okay. All right. This last bit of information can't be real, right? Like, come on.”

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. It's sweeps week.

HOLLY BROWN: Yes!

BLAIR HODGES: The ratings are down. Tony Danza needs to run for president or whatever.

They really jumped the shark at the end there.

HOLLY BROWN: I forgot about that But yeah, you know?

BLAIR HODGES: Well, he ran for something.

HOLLY BROWN: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: Anyway. So that's the surrealness of your life, as you describe it. That's one of the sitcom elements, these huge swings you encountered.

HOLLY BROWN: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: Wow, that's hard that you didn't really get to confront him.

 

The Hardest Part – 32:03

 

HOLLY BROWN: And there was a lot of other stuff happening that I haven't touched on yet that listeners will hear. Actually, they'll hear—I can probably say it—with my mom.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, let's talk about that, because episode three's out, the one where your mom gets to shine.

HOLLY BROWN: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: And I'll explain a little bit. We get more of your mom's backstory, and you'd already covered so much drama and trauma in episode two. I actually have a clip here from episode three. I'll play this.

Clip from "Everybody Knows But Me, Holly speaking: I have to be honest with you. This is one of the parts of my story I'm most scared to tell because my dad was the most undeniably likable man on what felt like planet Earth.

He did tremendously bad things. But by the end of his life, with his illness and his secret finally out in the open, there was this reckoning. And with that reckoning came something else: sympathy, and a reminder of how easy it is to love someone when you know you're about to lose them, and especially when you finally do.

My mom's story doesn't come with that same emotional arc. And I'm scared that when you hear certain things about her, you might not know how to feel. I didn't either.

I spent most of my life not knowing how to feel about how I could love her so deeply and still live with what she did. So if you find yourself holding two conflicting truths about her at the same time, good. That means you're understanding her correctly.

BLAIR HODGES: What were you most afraid to share about your mom?

HOLLY BROWN: So I introduce, in episode two, little nuggets of what my mom was doing at the same time all this stuff was happening. Because we had my dad's addiction, what that addiction played out as in our home as far as abuse, and then we had the cancer, and then we had the twins.

There was boom, boom, boom. We cover a lot in episode two. And then by episode three, I wanted to peel back the curtain and say, “Hey, for a normal person, this would be enough.” But what we haven't talked about yet is, yes, I had this larger-than-life guy, but I also have a mom.

And much like the sitcom worlds we watched, moms never get to be the main character. They hardly even get their own storylines that don't involve something incredibly sexist or cliché.

So I wanted to explore my mom's backstory because there was a whole other plot happening alongside everything else going on in my life that made it even more complicated when this giant secret came out.

And that was that—I dropped these nuggets of my mom's addiction. So we kind of see it play out where my dad's addiction is there, and my mom's addiction is also starting to present itself. And just living in the world of parents with addiction and sickness and death, it was just a lot of morbidity.

And I was very nervous to tell my mom's story because, like I mentioned there, it's easier—I almost said “it's so easy,” and I don't want to minimize anything—

BLAIR HODGES: Sure.

HOLLY BROWN: Perhaps it's easier when somebody gets something so uncontrollable like cancer, and there's an actual limit to their life. There is an endpoint. We know it's coming. So you start the process of reconciliation and healing and wanting to end things on a—you know, trying to control the ending of something.

But when that isn't happening, when someone doesn't have this terminal diagnosis but they do have this disease—and it's a very misunderstood disease at that—it becomes a lot more complicated for the people living in it and the people observing it to find the love that is there.

And so I just—I love my parents, but I also understand that everyone has their own different experiences with addiction and gratitude or forgiveness when it comes to things like that. And so I just wanted to highlight the complicated nature of conflicting diseases, really.

 

Airing Dirty Laundry – 36:17

 

BLAIR HODGES: And you're also thinking about public consumption of it too, because your dad's story kind of ends with his death. And you seem a little more protective of your mom.

And you're also reflecting on what you say: it's hard to hold different truths about a person like that. And I imagine we can't expect everybody to do that, right? Not all listeners are going to find your mom sympathetic no matter how you spin it, especially people who maybe have their own connection to addiction or have their own trauma surrounding it.

So holding up this story for public consumption is also a risk. And I wondered how you navigated those feelings of like, okay, I'm going to be public about this stuff. This is airing dirty laundry.

HOLLY BROWN: Absolutely. It's frankly terrifying.

Part of doing this is an effort to gain a slight sense of control over a life I felt like I had zero control over, because I'm an adult now and I can handle these things. I can look at these things and talk to people in a different way than I could before.

But with my mom—I love my mom. And I just want the listener to know that it is possible to experience the lowest of lows and still come out of something with love.

And another thing about my mom's story versus my dad's story is my dad has this overwhelming well of people who want to talk about him all the time.

BLAIR HODGES: Right.

HOLLY BROWN: And it's by nature of his personality, the way he operated in the world. He touched so many lives. He made everyone feel so special. He's just this giant man cult of personality.

And my mom didn't have that. And that's not because she wasn't great. There are also varying circumstances there, like her own childhood. She was a very shy person. They were truly opposites attract in that sense.

So it felt very important to me that while other people got to speak to my dad and about my dad and really help shape the kind of person he was, it's gonna take the onus on myself and my siblings to really shape who my mom is because she naturally has a smaller family and a smaller circle.

And so I felt like giving my mom even a little more time than my dad balanced out the bigness of who my dad was.

BLAIR HODGES: And throughout the show, you're talking to other family members, so they're bringing in their perspectives.

HOLLY BROWN: Yes.

BLAIR HODGES: Are you in touch with the twins?

HOLLY BROWN: That was another huge motivating factor for doing this show. I’m an adult now. I’m able to look back on all the things in my life and see where they led and better understand why decisions were made.

But one big decision that wasn't made yet was whether to meet them. And I didn't quite understand why I was so scared to meet them. That's where this podcast even exists, was me trying to understand that and say, “Oh, I think it's because there are so many secrets that are not out in the open yet.”

And until everyone knows all these secrets, I don't think people will fully understand why I haven't met them. So getting myself to the process of meeting them really is what this podcast is doing.

I want to get myself to a position where I'm like, “I can meet these people now because everything's out in the open, and I'm not entering the scenario people are trying to push me into.” People wanted to push us to meet. I want to be in control of meeting them. I want to be able to talk honestly.

A huge part of not meeting them too was, I don't know what version of my dad they had. I don't know. I've heard rumblings. For so long I carried this feeling of, “I don't know how to pretend to these other kids that my dad was perfect,” or that things were great.

I needed to be in a position in life where I could speak to both sides of that and be like, “My dad was great, and he was bad.” And I couldn't do that before, and now I can.

And so now it's like, all right, I'm here. Let's make this podcast. This podcast is the giant Band-Aid that I'm ripping off in order to get myself to meet them.

And, you know, I still don't know what their side of things are going to be like. There's still so much to learn. But yeah, that's the goal.

BLAIR HODGES: Wow. I can't wait to find out more.

Some of your family gave you background but didn't want to be on the show. Was there any weird difference in how they wanted to be presented?

HOLLY BROWN: I think it really speaks to what I'm saying about how careful I'm trying to be. My dad's family is so boisterous, like he is, and they're absolutely like—you put a microphone in front of them and they're thriving.

But with my mom's family, she grew up in a home that was so different. The love looked a lot different. It was very muted and quiet.

And I love my uncle and aunt, my mom's brother—she only has one sibling—and they didn't want to be on mic, and that's okay. They're just so different.

And because of that, I was like, all right, my dad's family kind of speaks for themselves when they're talking about my dad. My mom's doesn't so much, so I'm going to have to do a lot of that heavy lifting.

BLAIR HODGES: So you're not afraid that that side of the family is going to launch a podcast exposé on Holly Brown or anything?

HOLLY BROWN: No, no. I mean, it also helps greatly that I have my siblings' support in all of this.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

HOLLY BROWN: My brother and sister are so supportive of this. And I think for all of us, we've talked about it a lot. It's such an unburdening of, “You know what? Why are we hiding this?”

There was so much of, “What did people know?” because we just didn't know. We didn't know what other people knew. When you grow up in such chaos, you assume other people can see it, and there are a lot of other factors.

BLAIR HODGES: And each of you has your own family kind of too. Each sibling experiences family very differently, even though you were all there together.

HOLLY BROWN: Yeah. My siblings are just—we're. It's so freeing to be able to talk about this stuff openly and finally put the missing pieces together, both for ourselves and for our relatives.

Having to deliver some of this information to my relatives has been hard, but knowing I have my siblings in my corner almost legitimizes everything I'm doing.

You know, it's like, “Holly can't be lying because Casey's the straight-A student. She wouldn't lie.”

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, exactly.

HOLLY BROWN: Truly, I couldn't be making this podcast without them because there is an element of like, “Oh, this is very real for three full people.” This is one hundred percent what they experienced.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, I can't wait to hear more of it. How many total episodes are there in the show?

HOLLY BROWN: So what we're doing is the narrative portion of the show, which follows a similar narrative format to a lot of other beloved shows, is going to be around 10 episodes long.

And we dive—not all of that is pure revelation and stories. A lot of it is self-reflection. There's a lot of real-time self-reflection happening here for my family. So I'm going to be checking in with them, seeing how they feel. Obviously, we still have a lot to discuss when it comes to my journey of meeting my brothers.

And because when I've talked about this to anybody in the past, when I've shared parts of my story—and one main part of this being that my dad had this secret—it’s like an instantaneous unlock for the person sitting across from me. They look around and they're like, “My uncle had a secret.”

And then we get to go on this journey where it's like, I don't know if I ever would've gotten to know this about you if I didn't share this.

So what we're doing is, once my story concludes, what I really want to do—because I found so much comfort and so much release of shame when I got to talk to other people about it—is we're gonna bring other stories on. Other people willing to share these shockingly common experiences that we all don't talk about enough to know how common they are.

So it's gonna transition into a little bit of a chat show, but we're keeping the throughline of the 90s going, where it's gonna be very 90s. Ricki Lake, you know, Sally Jessy Raphael, chat-show vibes.

You know, I'm a comedian. I can't not lean into the absurd where I can. And I hope to bring some levity to these really hard conversations that I think are important to share.

BLAIR HODGES: The show is called Everybody Knows But Me. Check it out wherever—I mean, people are listening to this podcast, so they can get it in the exact same place. Everybody Knows But Me.

Holly Brown, it's such a great show. Thanks for talking to me about it.

HOLLY BROWN: Thanks, Blair. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. You know, I love hearing your thoughts about the show too when you've been listening. It's such a joy to experience it alongside the listener. So thank you, and thank you for having me on!

BLAIR HODGES: This was a pleasure! Yeah, that's one of the best parts of podcasting, you know, I want to hear what people think. 

HOLLY BROWN: Absolutely.

BLAIR HODGES: All right, see you, Holly.

HOLLY BROWN: Thanks, Blair.

 

Outro – 45:18

 

BLAIR HODGES: That's it for this mini episode of Relationscapes. Go check out Everybody Knows But Me, and then come back and listen to some more episodes of Relationscapes.

If you're enjoying this podcast, I hope you'll take a second to rate it and review it in Apple Podcasts. Here's a new rating that just came in. It's a five-star review from "Zucked Up." It says:

“Blair is one of the best interviewers in the podcast game. He approaches each guest and subject with curiosity, humility, and compassion. I end every episode with more understanding and knowledge.”

Thanks, Zucked Up. You're too kind. I tell you what, Zucked Up, if you hear me now and you haven't done this yet, recommend the show to some friends. Let's get some more people listening.

If you want to see some video clips from this episode and some other bonus stuff, you can follow me on Instagram or TikTok. It's @_Relationscapes.

Mates of State provides our theme music. I'm your host, Blair Hodges, an independent journalist in Salt Lake City, and I hope to spend more time with you soon here on Relationscapes.