Sofie Hagen and Abby Wambaugh
Abby Wambaugh and Sofie Hagen, the hosts of Help Hole, are comedians and writers and friends who love self help books. Abby is also a parent and Sofie is not JUST a writer, Sofie is an AUTHOR of two excellent books. (Will I Ever Have Sex Again?, and Happy Fat.)
Describe Help Hole in 10 words or less.
SH: Comedians Read Self Help Books So You Don’t Have To?
AW: Comedians Improve Themselves And Argue With Each Other About Human Nature. Sorry you said describe it in exactly 11 words right?
How are you two similar and how are you different? What do you each bring to the table?
SH: The way I would describe it is that Abby is the light and I am the dark. Abby likes people and parties and she’s fun and loud and silly. I stay at home reading books about trauma and doing stand-up shows about, well, trauma. When we read Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman for the podcast, it was quite obvious: Abby thinks four thousand weeks is not long enough to be alive; I think it’s at least three thousand weeks too long.
AW: Hahahaha
How did you meet? What’s the show’s origin story?
AW: Sofie and I met in 2022 when I was opening for her tour shows in Denmark (I am American but I live in Denmark, Sofie is Danish but lives in London). We had a long road trip to a far away show immediately after meeting each other, and we DID NOT RUN OUT OF THINGS TO SAY AT ANY POINT EVER.
What’s that quote I heard you say about self-help books? About people who poo poo them? Something about how self help books are ways to help our selves, and what’s so bad about that?
SH: I’m often raging about how people hate self-help books because they’re imagining books about feelings for women and the patriarchy hates both of those. Few people are poo poo’ing those How To Be A Strong Manly Millionaire Books written by men. But if a book is called How To Love Yourself and it’s written in a pink font, it’s suddenly unhip and uncool. Because it makes people uncomfortable. Being kind to yourself, having compassion, is embarrassing. I think that sucks. What’s wrong with wanting to learn to love yourself? How is that a bad thing? Leave us alone.
AW: lol you don’t have to leave me alone. I don’t want to be alone. (I think Oliver Burkeman says that quote in 4000 weeks. I think it’s like “This is not a self help book, but what’s wrong with wanting to help yourself?” But also, by our definition, 4000 Weeks is a perfect self help book.)
Anyway, I like that you aren’t pessimistic about self help books. Are you optimistic people?
SH: It’s funny because Abby is and I am not. But this just means that I am pessimistic about people who don’t like self-help books. Sure, there’s so much garbage in the ‘self-help’ and ‘wellness-industry’ and we definitely call it out when we see it. We’re not reading these books thinking they have all the answers and we should follow all the advice and trust every word. We are reading them, looking for little bits of gold. Even if it’s just a sentence that hits hard. Or a piece of advice that changes something in our brain chemistry. I’m a big complainer but I don’t feel like I can complain, if I am not also trying to make things better.
AW: I’m very optimistic. But I think a lot of people think optimism is naive and I’m not naive, I’m right. I can read a completely shitty book and still get something out of it because I’m looking for the good parts not the shitty parts. I still know it’s shitty. But a lot of Self Help is so so great, if you’re not spending all your time being worried you’ll look dumb reading it.
Fill in the blank: You will like Help Hole if you like _______.
AW: Writing morning pages and Nicolas Cage movies
If people haven’t started yet, where should they?
AW: When I stoop so low as to quote my own podcast in my actual life (daily) it’s usually something from these episodes: 4000 Weeks, The Body Keeps the Score, War of Art and Self-Compassion.
Do you have any rules about which books to choose / not choose? How do you pick?
AW: At first we really tried to get a list that would show the kinds of books we would cover, so people would see the list and know the range. But now I feel like we both keep going for the books we just need in our lives at this exact moment and that has made the episodes even better. It’s so fun and interesting how we pick books the other person would NEVER. And then we are inevitably interested and invested anyway because we are interested and invested in each other. IT’S SO SWEET. Or we make fun of each other.
How has making this show changed you as people?
SH: I keep saying to people, ‘I didn’t think it would actually change my life!’ because I genuinely didn’t. It was just meant to be a fun podcast with my friend. And now, I have a morning routine, meaning every day, my life is a bit easier than before. I have got a lot more self compassion, I’ve learned to add flirtation into my life, and I’m working on a third book, which I wouldn’t have thought of doing, if it wasn’t for Help Hole.
AW: Me too, same. I am on fire right now and I think it’s a great deal to do with this podcast. I am almost 7 months into a year of sobriety that Help Hole inspired, I have the most regular running habit that I have had in years, I am facing my creative work with a bravery and playfulness that is on a new level. And the absolute best part is when listeners come up to me and we can talk about that stuff right away, without any runway. I love it. I feel like it’s been an invitation to have some of my favorite conversations with strangers without any digging around.
How has making this show changed your relationship to one another?
AW: I think because we are making a podcast where we are earnestly working on ourselves, and talking about that process constantly, it has felt really natural to take working on our relationship seriously too. I think we communicate with each other much more openly now because it’s like, we know all these things about what we want and are working on and it would feel disingenuous if we didn’t carry that over into our friendship and working partnership. I feel really inspired about how we have grown in communicating since we started.
What has worked when it comes to growing Help Hole?
AW: We do 2 Bonus Episodes a month for our Patrayons (we say it that way cuz my mom does) and for those instead of reading books we watch movies or talk about podcasts or people we think could help us improve ourselves. They are really fun and more relaxed and we sometimes share teasers of them so people can see what they are missing and hopefully encourage them to back us on Patrayon. Our Patrayons are the beeeessssst and since we don’t do ads they are the only thing that makes it possible for us to grow and continue.
What’s a podcast you love that not enough people know about?
SH: This might be incredibly obscure, but if you have any Danish listeners, the Danish podcast ‘Sincere’ is one of the best things I’ve listened to. It’s quite old now. It’s two journalists who try to figure out who the anonymous person is who’s changing a Danish celebrity’s Wikipedia page all the time to make him look a lot better - and who changes his competitor’s Wikipedia pages to make them look worse - and is it, in fact, the (huge!) celebrity himself, doing this? It’s so silly and fun and I listen at least once a year.
AW: My First Joke is a podcast where comedians talk about the jokes that helped them find their voice, and it’s really good. I get excited every time there’s a new one. Very funny and smart hosting by Carson Olshansky and Kevin Wingertzahn.
What’s a podcast you love that everyone already knows about?
SH: I’m a huge fan of Pod Save The UK, If Books Could Kill, Maintenance Phase and Handsome.
AW: I listen to Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out and it started a few months before I did stand up for the first time and taught me like, every single stand up word I know.
Are there too many podcasts?
SH: There are too many podcasts created without the passion and actual desire to put the work in. I’m a comedian and I see so many comedians be pressured into starting a podcast because ‘you need to have a podcast!’ and then they have an idea they sort of care about and they do 10 episodes and leave it behind, because it turns out, people don’t want to hear people be uninspired for an hour.
AW: Nope, everybody who wants to make a podcast should make a podcast. Everybody should try everything they want to try, it’s the only way! I think if you quit after 10, that’s amazing, you made 10, you probably found a lot out about yourself and making podcasts, and maybe you used to make fun of people on the internet and for a while you were too busy and now you’re humbled.
What didn’t I ask you that I should have?
SH: Ohh, I think what I want you to ask us, is about money. No one likes to talk or hear about money, that’s why it’s interesting. So, Help Hole is completely self-funded and self-produced. We don’t want to do adverts because we don’t like them - and personally, I didn’t want to be produced by a big company, because I did a podcast for the BBC and I absolutely hated that someone had a say in the creative process. We started a Patreon and we just hoped enough people would subscribe, that we would no longer be losing money. If people subscribe to Patreon, they get a new episode every other week, which are arguably more silly and fun than the main episodes. We discuss movies, documentaries, people, apps and so on. But it has really made me think a lot about the difference between podcasting now and podcasting ten years ago, when I first started. Back then I did it with a horribly ugly logo made in Paint and I ran around with my little handheld Zoom recorder and chatted to my comedian friends. Now, you almost can’t promote a podcast without renting a studio with 4 cameras and professional lighting. I sort of miss my handheld little recorder and my ugly logo. Back then, I told my listeners that the podcast was free but if they saw me in the street or at gigs, they could come up to me, place cash in my hand and walk away. And they would. It was so cool every time it happened. I wish more people would talk about the financial aspect of providing (essentially) free content.
AW: What’s next? We’re releasing an Artist’s Way episode in September and then doing the Artist’s Way 12 week program with our Patrayons starting in January! I’m so so excited about this, have done the artist’s way 4 times and am really psyched to do it with the Holigans!! We call ourselves that except for Sofie-kins who hates cute names.
Thanks, Sofie and Abby!