Podcast Summary: You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes — We Made It Weird #221

Date: July 11, 2025
Host: Pete Holmes
Co-host: Valerie (Val)

Episode Overview

This week's "We Made It Weird" is a heartfelt and sprawling catch-up between Pete and Val after a brief hiatus. What starts light spirals into vulnerability, laughter, and tears of hope as the couple traverse topics of nostalgia, growth, friendship, risk, aging, therapy, and the changing seasons of their lives.

Their open, conversational style yields memorable reflections on childhood, relationships, middle age, healing trauma, and the spiritual “both/and” of life’s joy and pain. The mood shifts from playful to profound (as noted early: “the first half, a little bit more light…then the second half is just, wow” [01:00, Val]).

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Nostalgia, Identity, and Growing Up

• Swimming & Aging: Pete and Val joke about getting older, with Pete sharing about swimming daily and the inevitable comparisons and playful jabs (“He's older than all of us. He's older than God, I think.” [08:49, Val]).
• College Years: Pete reminisces writing songs as a moody college student, struggling with identity. He shares about composing “Who Could Love a Monster?” alone in an empty dugout, embodying that adolescent search for self.
  • “I felt behind that line, like somehow I was... waiting for my real life to begin.” [13:11, Pete]
• Finding Fit in Friend Groups: Both discuss not peaking in high school or college, and relate to movies like "Booksmart" about realizing–maybe too late–they missed out on "big" formative experiences.

2. Friendship, Attachment, and Jealousy

• Monogamous Friendships: Val describes high school best-friend dynamics as “dry runs” for romantic relationships [18:07, Pete].
• Dealing with Change: The anxiety of friends moving away comes up. Pete openly shares his protectiveness and scarcity-driven fears, tracing them back to his mother (“If she's giving it all to them, will there be any left for me? There's like a lack mentality.” [28:13, Pete]).
• Marriage as Security: Pete jokes about marriage being a male-invented anxiety mechanism: “Let's get the law involved. I want it on paper because I don't trust it.” [30:00, Pete]
• Letting Go & Authentic Connection: Both reflect on the need for vulnerability and the risks inherent in intimacy, friendship, and love.

3. Emotional Protection, Trauma, and Healing

• Internal Protectors: Pete dissects his "protector" part, inspired by Daniel Plainview (from There Will Be Blood), and how this stoic defender shapes his relationships and wariness of pain ([78:44]).
• Childhood Conditioning: Pete traces protective behaviors to his mother, a post-war refugee who modeled a wary outlook: “She would teach me, like, of course they didn’t come to your party. They got invited to a better party.” [33:57, Pete]
• Therapy & Parts Work: Pete shares breakthroughs from his Internal Family Systems (IFS) work, notably a powerful vision where his painful childhood home becomes filled with peace and beauty:
  • “Instead of the pain... it suddenly became like a cathedral... it was outside of time. It was like an expanded place.” [70:41, Pete]
  • “It was both and. The whole thing was both and.” [72:11, Pete & Val]
• Integration is Liberation: The idea that healing is not about erasing trauma but integrating it: “It was like this, all-encompassing vision... I will eat it all. It was all there.” [78:10, Pete]

4. The “Both/And” of Life: Joy, Grief, and Risk

• Beauty in Adversity: The episode’s spiritual core is the acceptance of both joy and sorrow:
  • “The only love that's worth having is both and.” [76:38, Val]
  • “My childhood house... was only accessible by going through a type of hell... going through that pain opened up this whole [heaven].” [84:17, Pete]
• Risk as the Juice of Life: Drawing on Justin Willman’s magic special and Esther Perel’s relationship philosophy, Pete and Val agree that risking pain is essential to meaning and passion:
  • “Risk is the juice not only of relationship, but of life.” [41:29, Val]
  • “You can live your whole life so cozy that you fell asleep and now you’re sleepwalking.” [41:44, Pete]
  • “If you leave, you can, but there’ll be a reckoning...” [30:03, Pete]
• Letting Go of Certainty: Acceptance that things don’t go linearly—true integration is “knowing that when you are triggered... you have the resources to move through it.” [88:32, Val]

5. Aging, Virility, and Physical Empowerment

• Pole Dancing as Reclamation: Val describes starting pole dancing classes and the transformation from self-consciousness to empowerment:
  • “You start... like, 'I’m not gonna be able to do it. I’m going to look so foolish.' And then you start looking really good to yourself. And then... it becomes very empowering.” [56:33, Val]
• Aging Optimism: Both push back on the narrative that growth and vitality are only for the young, citing an aerial yoga teacher who, at 78, insisted, “You are only as old as you let your body become.” [62:58, Val]
• Identity Through Activity: Pete champions doing what works for you—even if it's dorky (like swimming with a snorkel): “The reason I’m being the champion of it is it’s like the dorkiest thing in the world, but who cares? It’s your helps.” [65:25, Pete]

6. Parenting, Projection, and Legacy

• Shaping Children’s Worldviews: Discussion of how their daughter Leela absorbs their attitudes about friendship and conflict, and the dangers of teaching defensiveness (“I'm very good at keeping effortless track of what you did that was not you" [48:22, Pete]).
• The Balance of Openness vs. Protection: Recognizing the value in children’s less-judgmental, forgiving approach to relationships as something adults can learn from: “They really sort of let everybody be who they are…and they don’t build cases.” [47:32, Val]

7. Poetry, Reflection, Closure

• Poem Reading: Val reads “Little Things” by Sharon Olds, encapsulating the episode’s theme: finding and loving “small beauties” even amid pain ([93:10]).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “These tears are not of sadness, but of hope.”
  — Pete, [01:14]

• “I'm not proud of it and I don't think it's good. But I will say it leads to tension in the good way.”
  — Pete on jealousy, [27:55]

• “Life is risk. And life is, you know, courage and fear and uncertainty and all of these things.”
  — Pete, [42:05]

• “The only love that's worth having is the both and.”
  — Val, [76:38]

• “I felt like something you would do on your deathbed. It was like this, all-encompassing vision.”
  — Pete, [78:10]

• “We don't move on. We move through...or maybe we move with.”
  — Pete, referencing Father Greg Boyle, [89:57]

• “We are learning through these wounds to become softer, opener...feeling it all. Because we trust the process of feeling.”
  — Val, [92:57]

Important Segment Timestamps

• 05:18–10:39: Early banter, aging, playful burns, Pete’s embarrassing adolescent songwriting
• 13:11–16:13: College reflections, searching for identity
• 27:55–31:10: Jealousy, friendship anxiety, and marriage as security
• 40:08–42:05: On risk and joy—“risk it for a biscuit”
• 56:33–61:28: Val’s pole dancing journey, women’s empowerment, aging vibrantly
• 68:36–79:43: Pete’s transformative IFS therapy: from pain to integrated peace
• 84:31–88:15: Heaven and hell analogy, the “blue lit house” vision, and the centrality of integration
• 93:10: Val reads Sharon Olds’ “Little Things,” summing up the episode’s message

Tone and Atmosphere

• Warm, candid, and self-aware—the show is packed with humor, playful teasing, and deep vulnerability.
• Reflective and encouraging—an invitation to embrace both pain and joy, the past and the future.
• They oscillate between making each other (and the audience) laugh and bringing tears with raw admissions and moments of grace.

Final Takeaway

We Made It Weird #221 is an episode about owning your weirdness, embracing the complexity of past and present, and bravely facing both pain and beauty. Pete and Val model how partnership can be a space for both comfort and challenge, and how true growth lies not in erasing wounds, but in learning to see them through the “blue light” of acceptance and love.

“Keep it crispy.”