Office Ladies - Introducing How We Made Your Mother

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

How We Spent the Summer | S2E1 "Where Were We?” Season two of How We Made Your Mother kicks off with a big announcement: the show has officially joined the Office Ladies Network, thanks to a friendship between Josh Radnor and Jenna Fischer. Josh and Craig reminisce about filming “Where Were We,” the How I Met Your Mother season two premiere, breaking down the challenge of picking up right after Ted and Robin’s rain-soaked kiss and Marshall’s heartbreak. They dig into the emotional realism of post-breakup depression, the iconic “When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead” line, and behind-the-scenes stories about George Clinton’s cameo, Robin’s gun joke, and Neil Patrick Harris’s precision physical comedy. The episode also covers the show’s evolution, season-two adjustments (including the brighter red couch), and fan questions about serialization, background actors, and hiatus memories, before closing with a touching letter from a 15-year-old fan in Germany about how HIMYM brings her hope. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, you guys know we love Airbnb. I also just did a ladies' birthday trip. It was my friend's 50th birthday. All of us gals drove up the coast. It was so fun. We had the kitchen to hang out in, but then we all had our own space because, you know, we love each other. But I mean, I kind of want my own space at night. You know what I'm saying. We love the privacy. They're always in such great locations where you can really get to know the town you're in. And there's some real hidden gyms out there. These little pockets and neighbors, that you might not see if you stayed at a hotel. Listen, I could go on and on about Airbnb because I love it. It's a great way to travel with friends and family. And you know, your home might be perfect for Airbnb. If you frequently travel or have extra space, maybe you go out of town at the same time every year for a family trip. Your home could earn you money while you're away. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.ca. Hello, everybody. Hi there. So you've opened your podcast app and here in your office ladies' feed, you have found how we made your mother? What is going on here? Have we been hacked by another rewatch podcast?

Angela, are the machines finally rising up against us? No, not yet anyway. Sit tight, survivalist lady. All is right in the world. for now, and we have some big news. If you checked out our episode from October 15th, you can hear the whole story. But in short, you probably know that we have launched the Office Ladies Network, and I'm sure you already have been listening to Lazy Genius. Thank you very much, with the amazing Kendra Adachi. Yes, well, we have now added our first rewatch podcast to the network, and it is

how we made your mother, looking back at nine seasons of how I met your mother. The podcast is hosted by Josh Radner, who of course played TED on the show, along with Craig Thomas, who is one of the co-creators of How I Met Your Mother. I love it when Josh says, I am the I and how I met your mother. I play The Eye. Well, Josh and Craig do a deep dive not only into the characters and plots of each episode, but they are also taking a close look at the issues the show confronted, love and loss, commitment, rejection, friendship, careers, everything. That is honestly my favorite part of this podcast is when they take a storyline about one of these topics and then they discuss it. They discuss that theme and why they made the choices

they made to have the characters do the things they did. Oh, it's amazing. But they also talk about what it felt like to be in an early to mid-2000s long-running network sitcom, which is a topic, of course, very close to our office ladies' hearts. And also close to our office ladies' hearts is the community that they have built for their podcast. Everyone, it is going to feel familiar to you. The warmth, the kindness, the encouragement that their community has is absolutely office ladies' community. It so is. And I love hearing from their fans, you really hear them in each episode. So you guys, they have just finished the first season of the podcast covering the first season of the show. Yes. And now we are bringing you the very first episode of their second

season. We love it. We think you'll love it. If you want to binge season one, you can go subscribe to How We Made Your Mother. But you can also start right here. Honestly, this episode is terrific. And you can listen wherever you get your podcast, or you can head to their website, How We Made Your Mother.com. And of course, you can find them on socials at How We Made Your Mother. And here we go. We are proud to present the newest member of the Office Ladies Network, How We Made Your Mother with Josh Radner and Craig Thomas. Hello, this is Jenna Fisher and Angela Kinsey from the Office Ladies podcast in Los Angeles.

And something we love about how we made your mother is the amazing community of this show. The fans and people that write in, we think you guys are awesome. And I love when Josh and Craig get philosophical. I mean, I love all the behind-the-scenes stories, but my favorite is when Josh suddenly starts quoting Einstein or some ancient philosopher, and then he and Craig basically break down the meaning of love, or the power of friendship, or forgiveness, or you name it. But I often find myself feeling a little lighter, a little more hopeful after listening. And that's a pretty special. special thing to be able to do. And that's why we're thrilled to be adding the show to our

Office Ladies Network. Welcome, guys! Oh, and you better have us as guests real soon. Uh-huh. Get on it. I'm alone. What a pity. I won't be soon in New York City when I see you. Please permit me to tell you everything in New York. City. Well, here we are. Welcome to the first episode of Season 2 of How We Made Your Mother. I am Josh Radner. I played Ted Mosby on the TV show called How I Met Your Mother, which ran on CBS from 2005 to 2014. I am here with the co-creator of that show, Craig Thomas. Hello, Craig. It's great to see you. Hello, Josh. Very excited to be back here with you and the fans and our new

wonderful friends over at the Office Ladies Network. O-L-N, we sometimes call it, which is just to save us the energy of saying all those syllables. We don't have that kind of time. We're very busy people. Yeah, we got to get on with it. Tell this story. Yeah, tell this story. How did this happen?

Yeah, we're delighted to be working with Jenna and Angela and their team. So the way this came about was, you know, we were a kind of lean-and-mean operation first season. me, Craig, Alec, Doug, Alex, just this very small team, and we were just doing this all on her own. And I called Jenna Fisher, my old pal from back in the days, because we were on big hit TV shows around the same time. So we got to know each other. And I was reaching out, one, to ask her advice as a trailblazer

in the rewatch podcast space. Oh, yes. If she had any advice for us, but also, more specifically, I wanted to see if she would come on our podcast to talk about the strangeness of being, you know, a decade or so of your life, being thought of as someone you're not, being, you know, the whirlwind of being on a hit show, like all these things. And before we even got into it, she said, are you guys working with a podcast company?

And I said, no. And she said, well, Angela and I have started our own podcast company called Office Ladies Network. And we would probably be delighted to have you on. She actually said we would be sight unheard, podcast unseen? Podcasts, like, how do you say that? Sounds unheard. Yeah. She just, and then her and Angela gave a couple episodes of spin and immediately called us and said,

we love this. We'd love to pull you under the umbrella of the Office Ladies Network. We'd love to cross-pollinate in any ways that we could. And we're so delighted. We're so thrilled. Craig, what do you have to add? We're so honored, they would ask us. They're so good at it.

They're so good. Their show's so good. Jenna and Angela, they are trailblazers. They, you know, they kind of paved the way for, like, a comedy rewatch podcast like ourselves to come along, too. And so we're grateful that they kind of took us under their wing and were their partners now. Yeah, thank you guys. Thank you to Jenna. Thank you, Angela.

We're huge fans of the office. You will hear them on here and us on there. We really will kind of cross-pollinate. It's going to be great. We're very grateful. I mean, it's kind of cool that it's a, when we were growing up, like, crossover episodes, were, you know, like LeBern and Shirley would show up on happy days, right? It's true. I miss that. I miss that so much.

Tradition, and we didn't do that in our era. So we're doing it now with our rewatch podcasts. We're doing it now. I love it. I love retroactively. We're doing it in this other medium since TV's too hard now. It's too hard to make TV shows now, so now we'll just do it on a podcast. Yeah. So thank you, thank you to Jenna and Angela and their team over at Office Ladies Network. We're thrilled to be part of the And we are putting a pause on the YouTube segment. Craig and I'll just say this up front. Craig and I are aging aggressively.

Just very aggressively each day. I had a lot of work done over the summer. I don't know what you were talking about. It has not settled. It has not settled yet. It didn't tick. We cannot, in good conscience, we cannot show you Craig Thomas' face right now

until his work settles. If you were watching the show over on YouTube, thank you. We loved having you go over there, and we're still going to have some video components to the show, but we're not going to be on YouTube every week. Yep, you'll see fun videos on our socials, but it won't be the full episode on YouTube. And you can monitor Craig's healing, which we're all pulling for. The bandages will come off about episode 11 or 12 that we're discussing. It's pretty hard to look at right now, I've got to be honest.

There's like a drainage pipe going from each eye. Josh, I haven't had the work done yet. What is going on? It's coming up. It's next week. This is horrible. Why don't we get to it, Craig? Why don't we launch this season two?

Turning now to our trusty producer, Alec, Alec, tell us the name of this episode and when it originally aired. Absolutely. And hi, guys. Welcome back. Hi, Alex. It's exciting. And I'm very excited also about this Office Ladies Network.

Jen and Angela have already been amazing to work with, thanks to them from me also. And Colin, who is part of their team as well. The episode is called Where Were We? It originally aired on September 18, 2006, written by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas. Where were we? It's a great question to ask. We love the meta title. We wrapped up season one, and I haven't seen you for years, and by years, I mean, like, six weeks, maybe.

Six weeks. It's been the smallest summer hiatus I've ever had. It is a brief hiatus. It's not like the real, the real Hemium hiatus several months. I would not see you for a while. You would go off on crazy adventures. the writers would come back way before the actors. We'd work for like six, eight weeks before you got there.

All the actors would come in looking tan and beautiful and be like, how was your guy summer? We'd be like, we're haggard and gray. We haven't seen the sun. Don't ask us how our summer was. But yeah, no, this was a quicker turnaround. So it's fun to jump right back in. I love the meta title of Where Were We?

That was the feeling in trying to break this episode in the writer's room of like, how do we pick this up? And here's my first thought, Josh, when I started watching this. one, which I did last night and I loved it. I hadn't seen this in years and years and years and years. And the pressure coming in his episode was immense. We had been advised slash scolded to be less serialized by in between the two seasons, season one and season two, we did not agree with that advice and we didn't really take it. But we really wanted to come in and kill it to show that we could do this kind of serialized emotional comedy show on CBS and have it find an audience.

but we weren't there yet, and so we really felt like we're singing for our supper. The thing, the first thought I had was, it's so funny that we had to speak to the summer passing to still stay in season for when the TV show was airing. You were just talking about crossover episodes in like 70s and 80s TV. Another seemingly now vestigial thing

is this idea that you have to be in the season where you're airing, right? On streaming, who cares? Who cares? Like, ooh, Andor, why is it winter in Andor? It's like, it's summer. while I'm watching it here in the real world. I'm turning this off. Yeah, but we, this is implausible now. But we, there was this kind of common understanding

and we definitely didn't feel ready to buck of that conventional wisdom. You've got to come in basically in the season so you can catch up to your Thanksgiving episode and your Halloween episode and your Christmas episode, all that stuff. And you can be sort of in sync with where the viewer is watching it in time.

And that was what dictated the storytelling in this episode, showing the whole summer passing and kind of catching up to ourselves. Here we are again in September and New York City. I was laughing at the idea that shows just don't have to do that anymore. Well, let's just bring the listener up to speed. So where we last left are heroes, right? Yes.

So Ted makes this bold move to Robin in the rain. He shows up. They have this grand, you know, romantic, cinematic kiss. he returns home to his Upper West Side apartment from Brooklyn, which is a longer trip than people realize. We've already established the geography is implausible that a woman in Brooklyn would hang out that much on the Upper West Side. But he gets back to the Upper West Side,

and he's delighted he can't wait to get home and tell Marshall and Lily. And Marshall is sitting out on the stoop holding the engagement ring. Lily is gone and devastated. So Ted has to pivot and sit down and sit with his best. friend as they get pelted with rain. One of my favorite moments in the whole series is that is you putting your arm around him on those steps. And that was the Block Party song, right?

Yep. This Modern Love by Block Party, one of my favorite needle drops, as they say, in the whole show. So that's where we end season one. I'm sure CBS was delighted by that happy waltz into the sunset ending. Tune in for more sadness in September. And I wrote you this little ditty.

to sing to you in New York City. We'll be right back. And now, back to the show. So then where were we? We popped back into this episode. And I think it's one thing that I told Jordana that was really funny as I was watching. I was like, so we're filming presumably an hour or two after they get inside, Robin has come over.

Or maybe it's later that morning, right? No, yes, that's definitely. We're still wet from the rain, right? You can see that we've dried off a little. But there's four months between the end of that scene and I just remember, you know, the props or I think it was really wardrobe. They come through with spray bottles.

Yeah. And they're trying to get you wet, you know, and keep you kind of looking plausibly wet. And, but it's, it's such a funny time jump, especially because most TV and film is shot out of order. Yeah. So you have to really know the script well enough to keep that order in your head as you're going and know where your character is emotionally because, you know, you could shoot the most emotionally impactful scene in the first couple days. And then you're shooting the previous, you know, stuff. So it's wild.

But anyway, just give us a quick armchair summary, Craig, of what happens in season to episode one, where we're. were we? Yeah. I remember in the writer's room, like, feeling all this pressure until we realized two things. One, we're going to track the entire summer and show like Marshall's descent into madness through the summer and catch up to where we are. That was the idea one that unlocked it. And idea two was this credit card idea where Marshall gets a hold of in midway through the episode

of Lilly's credit card bill. It's sent to him and the idea of just these pieces of evidence of what she's been up to. And that's going to sort of steer the second half. of that episode. So basically this is showing the summer of these two roommates, one of whom is the happiest he's ever been, he got Robin, and one of whom is the absolute saddest that he's ever been. And that was just a compelling idea to us. You guys had so much fun. I could feel how much fun you had in playing with that idea that Ted is kind of euphoric. But it's a funny thing when your friend is down, you almost have to, like, put on your sad face with that.

Like, I mean, it's a kind thing to be empathetic and be like, buddy, I know. You know, and also it's hard to not be able to share your joy with your best friend of what's happening with you, you know. Oh, yes. I mean, the universe or whatever, the narrative storyteller who's writing this story, it's like, it never kind of, there's always this kind of, I've noticed, like, a, kind of friction between where you are and where your friends might be

or even your partners. And everyone's not always on the same page. And that's something you have to negotiate with friendship and with just living in the world. I loved what a good friend Ted was in that initial moment where Robin comes in and she's going to say something about her and Ted getting together

and he's like, no, there's only one thing that happened in the news last night. There's no other news stories here. And I loved Ted for that. And I think it really earned Ted's later moment. You see Ted really tending to Marshall's well-being the whole summer. And it felt very earned later in the episode when Ted does kind of say, enough, stop acting this way.

This isn't you. You'll never get her back or move on like this. And we'll get there, but I love that arc. That was Ted's arc in the episode to start off as the caretaker and then becomes the one who kind of really tries to shake him out of it in the end in a way that is almost a little too much, but it's great. And that idea, we've all been on, I think, both ends of that equation. We've been the miserable guy that's being scraped off the floor by our friends.

And we've been the super happy guy who's like, I can't be this happy around this person I love right now. I have to hide this happiness. You know, there's an interesting thing that is like a real friendship dilemma that you guys were mining, I think, in this episode, which is, one is like, I'm going to sign off on my friend's version of reality. Like, I'm going to say, yes, he did you wrong, or she did you wrong, or this is horrible, or you're the victim here.

Whatever their idea is, for a long time as your friend, you're like, yes, you have a right to be feeling what you're feeling and I am with you and I hate them for you and with you. But then at a certain point, the better friend act is to say enough. You've got like, I have a very dear friend who was really stuck around some stuff. I don't want to go too into it. But one of our other very dear friends, these are longtime friends, he really risked their friend. by saying, you've got to stop this. Like, you've got to forgive this person. You've got to move on. Yeah. And I really salute this other friend for risking that. It can be very hard sometimes to speak capital T truth to a friend who's really got their stories, you know, set.

Yeah. And to say, like, this is only hurting you. Yeah. I think Ted was the best friendship Ted exhibit in that episode was when he yelled at Marshall. Yeah. I think that was, it was time. Yeah. That was the power of that structure of seeing the whole summer past, day 56, day 67, blah, blah, blah.

It's a long fucking time. Yeah. It's the whole summer. It's September now. And it's like, it's almost like Ted is saying in this meta way, like, we've still got to be characters in this show. We've still got to. We've got this show to do. People are watching it.

Also, it's like, it's like a narrative is about action. You're just being a big baby on the floor. We've got to do stuff. We've got to take some action. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just realized there's a very meta thing. At the beginning where a marshal's going to reach the phone to call Lily and doesn't Ted say, I will punch you in the face?

Yeah. And he says, you're a good friend, Ted. Yeah. And, like, he ends up actually kind of punching him in the face and it's him being a good friend, like later. Yeah. You know, that's kind of like the synopsis of what happens in the episode, right? Yeah, it is.

That's right. He needs that punch in the end. He needed that. He needed to be shaken out of this. Yeah. I remember the writer's room. everyone had their breakup story, right? In the writers' room,

everyone, like that sort of summer passing, that, like, blur of being in a months-long post-breakup, like, depression. Everyone in the writer's room had stuff on that. And I hope this isn't being, like, sharing too much, but, like, you know, Jason Siegel had had a serious relationship when we met him and shot the pilot. He wrote quite a big movie about it,

so I don't think we're spoiling anything. But just to talk about, like, he was very... That was fresher for him that. It was before he wrote that movie. or maybe he was writing that movie as we were shooting this, but he knew how to lean into that feeling, right? He had been in that feeling not too long before we shot this. You didn't get the feeling like Jason was like would not draw.

Like Jason knew how to suffer over a relationship ending. That was available to him. Yes. You know, when Barney comes in and one of Neil's great things is like his ability to like pivot. Yeah. Like just pivot. Like he can go one place. It almost is like slaloming down a hill.

You make it like a sharp. turn to clear a gate. Like, he's so good at that. And his, like, real genuine concern for Marshall and then his realization that they're all three single, so he thinks at the same time. And something Neil does in this, but I don't know if he did it in season one.

I think he did it a little bit, but he's really leaning into it. When he looks off into the middle distance for these monologues. He really does. Yes, he really does how that. And to him in his head, it's like they're swelling strings.

Like this is like a big monologue in a movie that he is delivering. And you always get the feeling like on the cab over. He thought up some of these lines. Like he's so performance. Yeah, Barney's writing his own dialogue. Yeah. In Barney world, Barney's definitely crafting a dialogue. I have a fun fact about that speech.

First of all, I mean, Neil fucking crushed that speech. Amazing. And that turn at the end where he realized, and his magical ability to know that Ted and Robin hooked up is great. Neil killed that And a fun fact about that speech is it is kind of cribbed from the grapes of wrath I'll explain So we had Fitzgerald in season one

Steinbeck in season two Yeah And it was not I will not take credit for that at all And I don't think it was Carter either Greg Malins Who was joining the show at that point Greg Malin's a very funny writer

executive producer wrote for friend great dude rode for friends for many years and moved up the ranks to the point where he was running friends for at least a couple of seasons, I think. And then we learned he was this huge

how much her mother fan. We were huge friends fan. We hired him to come, be kind of like our number two guy on the show in season two. He wasn't on season one. And he came into season two and right away had this great pitch

for this Barney's. We knew we wanted a big Barney speech that ended with Barney that was celebrating them all being single. Thank God, we're all single for the first time together and then realizing Robin, like Ted and Robin hooked up

and deflating. We knew that shape. But we didn't know what the speech was, and we're like, it's the opening of the season two, the first sequence, it needs to fucking kill. And Greg said, well, there's that speech in the Graves of Rath. I'm trying to look it up as we're talking where it's like, I'm just like one line from it is like, in the dark, wherever there's a fight for hungry people, a cop eating up a guy, or kids laughing while hungry, I'll be there. So Greg, Greg Malen somehow had that speech in his head. And he's like, what about that except it's Barney fucking people? And I was like, yes.

And, like, we looked up the speech from Grapes of Wrath and, like, we sort of modeled it on that. I hadn't thought of that for so many years before I watched this last night. It was like, that was Gregs of Rath. Yeah. You know, this is a little name-droppy, but it's a fun little thing.

I'm friendly-ish with Jason Rass. I've known him for a long time. And he has this great song I love that. I don't even know if he's released it called Rescue. And his manager told him, like, you should steal from the greats. Like, steal from, like, the greatest melodies and composers of all time. And so he showed me that this song, Rescue, is the chord progressions of Pocobel's canon.

Oh, yeah. But you'd never know it. It's just like he used this kind of map. He's not the only one that did that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he used the map, right? And I think, like, you guys, you can graft something on to a form that really works. I mean, it's a rhetorical form.

It's almost like a political speech that really is, like, yes, we can. Yeah. Yeah, it's the repeated, it's like a pattern poem. And it's like, if we take that kind of pattern poem and we kind of do our own version of it, it's there it is. It's like weird owl, you know? It's just like, let's take something good and make it our own.

Yeah, I love that. And you're weird allying it. You know what struck me at the end of Barney's speech when he figured, and then he looks at Ted and Robin, it takes him a second and a half. And he says, oh, you guys did it. Like he knows. And I realize there's one other thing that I'll point out in this episode.

I think it's with Ted and, Marshall, they do have telepathy. They do. It's not just in the telepathic moments. They're getting to know each other so well that they get it. They understand unspoken. They can read each other's body language. They can read stuff between them.

And I thought that was fascinating. It's a real gesture of the intimacy that is developing between all of these characters. They just know things. I really like, because Robin says it's like we have a baby. We had a baby all summer. We just got together. we have a baby, his name's Marshall, and like, and I love, I loved that metaphor because Ted is being parental to Marshall. We're seeing, like, young Ted who will someday grow up to have

these two children parenting Marshall through the summer, and in the end, giving him tough love and being kind of firm and challenging him and using that parenting speed after this summer of comfort. I mean, it's like, when couples get together and they accidentally get pregnant so fast, and they barely, like, that's what Ted and Rob, they're like, we just, us got together, and now we have a baby, a screaming, crying baby on our hands. This is teeny tiny, but one joke that I was disappointed. Every now and again, someone will ask me, like, do you have regrets? Would you go back and, like, change a joke?

I did have one of those because I misremembered a joke in this, and I think my misremembering was funnier, and maybe we tried to write it this way and we're told to change it or got a note or something. But you know the joke where Marshall comes out, and he's talking about how, he has a lily shampoo. He's talking about how it smells like lavender and seashells and hope. And it's both comforting and erotic at the same time. And then Robin goes, that's mine.

I thought we wrote it that Ted goes, that's mine. Which is so much funnier. It is funnier. I was heartbroken watching this last night because I've misremembered this for 20 years as the better version of that joke. And I can't remember if we had it that way and we're like told the chance. I don't know what the hell was happening there. But it's still kind of a funny joke.

It would have been so much funnier if it was Ted's. It's also like, I don't know. It's certainly now. I mean, maybe it wasn't true then. Like, who can tell the difference you know of female and male shampoo at this point? Totally, no, absolutely. I was thinking there must be things in writers' rooms where I thought you guys probably had a really fun time with similarities between the early months of dating and breakups. Like, just like getting an idea and kind of crowd sourcing it and running around, you know, the dry erase board, like getting up all the day.

And then picking the best ones, right? Yep, absolutely. That's what that whole form was where you're going through the summer and here to similarities kids. and I love that it's future Ted kind of giving the kids this bit of wisdom, how there's overlaps of these things. That was so much fun to pitch on. Yeah, we found a lot of, we found a bunch of good structures in this one. Like, even like mini structures like that.

Like, that's a minute of the show right there. You know, it's 45 seconds of the show is like that concept. And then that concept, you know, not too much long past that. You're getting another credit card, mystery of it all. And again, another mystery episode, right? This episode becomes a mystery episode, like so many of the great. how much of other episodes, proving my theory that the mini mysteries within this larger series mystery are so many of our best episodes are that. And I think that's why this episode works, because

there's a mystery to solve. And Lily is this completely off-screen presence in imaginary land, and this mystery needs to be solved. And I did love that about this one. You know, there's those memes that go around, like, kids, I'm going to tell you a nine-year story that could have taken 15 minutes, Right? Yep. And I understand that, but it's almost like saying, well, you're going to die anyway, so you should just get on with it and kill yourself.

Like, there's so much pleasure to be had in the ride and in the storytelling and in the little mini mysteries along the way. Yeah. As opposed to all of those other sitcoms that never wasted any time or took any word sidetrists. They were all business all the time. Oh, just forward action, momentum. of who was the boss?

You know? Yeah, so I think there's, there's each little episode that has its own kind of self-contained little mystery. I mean, there's a reason I think people keep watching it over and over, and that's part of what we're interrogating here. I loved Barney's suicide mimes. They're so disturbing. I can't believe we got him on.

Like the first one is a gun. The second one is he's hanging himself. The third one is, what's it called when you do the samurai? Sapuku. Sapuku, yeah. Yeah, oh, my God. It's so specific. He's really thought out every beat of how he would disembowl himself.

And you probably, this is another thing that Greg Malins used to say to me is he's like, it's really important for the writers to get to know the actors because you learn more about what you can give them, like what you can, what they, you know. And one of the things I think that you guys started to notice about Neil was he was a physical comedian, like, extraordinary. Like a cartoon, a genius, yeah. Like his precision and his ability to kind of like mime things and turn on a dime and do these little, I mean,

just incredibly specific, virtuosic things. Like, you could feel that, like, and I don't even remember how much direction was in the script. Like, they were probably pretty specific, right? I mean, what he did with the sort of disemboweling himself with a samurai sword was, was a work of art. We did not scripted that.

I don't know that I would love to. Maybe we wrote that in, but again, if we did, it was better than we could have hoped for. The writing is really sharp in this episode. Like, Jordana, we noticed she was laughing so hard. Oh, good. This is my wife, Jordana, for those of us,

just joining us. First time viewer. First time viewer. And she said, she leaned over to me, and she's like, wow, we're laughing like a lot. Oh, that's so good to hear. I was so nervous about this episode at the time. I so wanted it to work, so did Carter.

I think that you're starting to see that the kind of comedic landmines and character quirks and stuff that you planted in the first season start to really pay off, like when you come back to, you know, and even, you know, Robin as a gun nut. We learned that in this one.

He calls her a gun nut, and she says, no, I'm a gun enthusiast. Enthusiast. Enthusiast is such a good word. So good. Yeah, that was us finding those other speeds and finding how Kobe can, Kobe, when she warns him not to bet, and Ted's not going to find out. And she's holding the gun.

Like, finding this feed that Robin is a little bit terrifying at times was amazing. And also, like, the, of course, Ted is not a gun fan. Like, of course, like, that's a great moment of conflict. Like, like, that's going to, you know, their different kind of worldviews and their different political takes, like, it's very smart how that starts to reveal itself. But there was something about this episode, like, I found myself laughing really hard at this episode. Oh, that's so great to hear. I really did. You know what I thought was a great line is when Marshall says, why eat food? It's just going to leave me. And then Ted says, you know, he kind of makes the joke

explicit, at least in this scenario, you get to do the dumping. Like, it's such a dumb throwaway joke, but so smart. That was one of my hardest laughs. It was when I forgot about the joke completely. That was one of my hardest laughs of the whole episode. And also Ted's face like, hey, like trying to lighten the mood, you know. I thought there was a great, almost like a pretty iconic Barney line in this episode when he said, when I get sad, I stop being sad and just be awesome instead.

True story. Like, that's like a Barney T-shirt line. Like, like it gets quoted all the time as one of the most quoted lines I see. And it's just sort of a throwaway in the middle of this episode. It's so like thrown away. but it caught on. It's also, it's a, it's a kind of monument to repression. Like, it's like, it's weird.

It's like not quite a healthy thing, but like growing up in the Midwest, like, I get it. I get it. It's not a self-help book, but it also kind of can work for a while. But it was also, you know, we know from season one that he's got this reservoir of emotion that he's sitting on top of that he's put a tie in a suit on top of. So it's both a throwaway funny line that his character revealing. but we'll also come back. Because that can't last.

That does not last. That doesn't last forever. And we go on to show that, but of course we didn't know exactly how and when we would show all of those things. And that's what was fun about getting to Robin as a gun nut. I'm like, right, we found that there. We found that there. And we started to know her a little more. And this old man, he must admit, fell in the wheel in New York City. And now, commercials.

End of commercials. Back to show. You know what's a fun runner in this episode is, uh-oh, already? I know. A little premature ejaculation runner, just for the folks watching an 8.30 on CBS with our kids. But that's another way where Ted has telepathy. He's calling her. Like, he can feel it in the house. Oh, I love that.

I love that. It's kind of like a parent knows that the kid is in danger downstairs, you know? Like, I need to go save them. And he's right. That it really is telepathy. He knew from 50 feet away in a closed door and Marshall's doing it. It really is parental because as a parent, you do have that. You're like, it's too quiet out there.

Some shit's gone around. It's not even the noise that calls you. It's the quiet. It's too quiet out there. What was the line Ted says he watched a scary movie? Was that to Robin? Yeah, because, yeah, yeah. No, he said that to Robin was being like Marshall's,

He was sleeping on our floor. He was sleeping on the floor. He watched the scary movie. He watched the scary movie. It's like the tough mom and then the pushover. Ted's the pushover dad. Yeah, he's the good cop. She's the bad cop.

Yeah. Marshall getting ejected from the baseball game and throwing the chili dog. Holy shit. I forgot about that. I forgot about that too. There's so many like viral clips of shit like that really happening at baseball games and sporting the sporting events now these days that I'm like, oh, that feels oddly prophetic. People stealing balls.

from kids and also jumbotrons never more in the news than the last couple months you know yeah oh yes yes they have a little cold play retroactive shout out it felt weirdly topical oh i this is a little backstage thing that i remembered so barney has a line about what do you guys watch love actually until your period sync up was that the line and then we laugh and carter came in and gave a note to I think me and Neil, and he said, I want it to be Ray Leota's laugh from Goodfellas. Because remember we both got... Yeah, yeah.

Like, there's that, like, insane, like, tackle. And he was, like, he was very specific. Like, I just wanted to be Ray Leuton's laugh from Goodfellas. Like, a little too big and a little too crazy. Yeah, that's a great note. And it made... He was absolutely right card, because it made for a great hard cut to that gun firing cutting off that laughter.

Yeah, that was hilarious. That's hilarious. We just have to talk about funk legend, George Clinton. He's so good in this. He's so hilarious. He's like low-key, a genius actor in addition to being like a toweringly great musician. Yeah, and breaking the fourth wall and turning to camera. Now I'm going to let her play with my hair.

I'm going to let her play with my hair. Oh, my God. It's so funny. The funny thing is, here is, I think we were told maybe in some sense of panic to boost the ratings. Again, to give context we had started by the end of season one to lose to that show. where Howie Mandel was opening briefcases full of money with models. We were losing to that.

I think we're trying to cast some huge, like, not that George Clinton is not huge, but like some, I don't know, some rock legend that was like beyond what we could get. They wanted Paul McCart, you know, whatever it was. And George, to be clear, George Clinton is incredible get and enduring legend in his own right,

but so specific and strange, and it's not like where we started. I'm sure the network pitched us all these huge names that were, like, current, like, popular people that are 30, you know what I mean? And to get, like, grizzled old, wonderful Georgianne and Lillian. With eight different colors in his hair? He's the eight different colors in his hair. He has been through some shit, and now he's taken Lily away from Marshall.

He's added to his amazing resume. But much like everything with the show, it's like where we landed was actually funnier and cooler than any place. It's where we needed to be. It's so funny. He was so great. and it's whatever the 10 names we didn't get before we got to him, and I mean this in the best way,

it was so right, I'm so thrilled that it was him, he was amazing. And we had a personal connection. I will say we had a personal connection to get him. Erica, the casting assistant, Erica Pennington, I think her mom was part

of George Clinton's management team. It was because we were not a hit show. That's what I'm trying to say. We couldn't have gotten Mick Jagger to do that. No one really knew who the fuck we were still. So we needed to call in a favor through directs of contact to George Clinton because we struck out on all the other names.

But we had a personal line to George Clinton, and that's how we got it. I think I'm remembering that correctly. And also just a quick thing to tie it to you, he played at Wesleyan. He did. P. Funk played Wesleyan when Alec and I were in college. P. Funk played a huge show at Wesleyan that was like the spring fling. It was, to this day, legendary show. They're amazing.

I hope it doesn't seem like anywhere I'm done playing George Clinton. He's fucking great. It was so great. We got him. And I was in a movie. with Catherine Hahn and Juno Temple called Afternoon Delight that had a very uncomfortable strip t-scene to biological speculation, which remains one of my favorite songs. I'm just trying to get in on the George Clinton conversation. I didn't meet him that day. I loved, oh, funk legend, George

Clinton. I'm so glad you spotted me at your concert and dragged me up on stage to dance with you, Courtney Cox style. And I wonder, for our beloved Gen Z. fans out there, do you guys know what that is a reference to? Because this is like, that's such a Gen X deep cut. This is a pre-Friends Courtney Cox. Yeah. Getting called on stage by Bruce Springsteen in the video for dancing in the dark, right? Correct. Yeah. I think it's her first big thing, Courtney Cox. It's her first big thing she did. Yeah, she's like literally plucked out of the audience and dances adorably with Bruce Springsteen in this very iconic famous video.

But there are a couple of real deep cultural cuts that I'm like, almost like Shakespeare, like the full, like you need like this is what this meant in 1587 or whatever, you know? This podcast episode is airing in October, right? It's October as you're listening to this, mid-October. That means we have passed the 20-year anniversary of the hymium premiere, which as we record,

this is not here yet here. That's next week. A week from this Friday is the 20 years since it aired underscoring the need to maybe give a few cliff notes here and there 20 years later for what was at the time. Also a reference to something 20 years prior to that that was an 80s music video with Courtney Cox. So yes, we'll try to remember that as we go to name check some of those. And it's just such a funny thing that like that whole sequence is just opening up the cranium of a person who's going insane and making insane connections based on a credit card statement. So he's convinced that there's this ferret involved in. And if the ferret is to mock Marshall who hates ferrets, so she's doing everything to wound

and hurt him. It's accurate, right? When you're imagining that other person you broke up with and the incredible happiness they are experiencing now that you're out of their life, it's, it's come, even though it's completely insane and there's ferrets in George Clinton, it's from a real place. That's why I think it lands, because it is like, your brain spins those things, that person. And the unknownness, like, it's like Jaws. You just don't see the shark for so much of that movie.

Like, where's Lily? What is Lily doing in the real world? She's somewhere. She's probably in San Francisco. I mean, we all do it when someone hasn't texted or emailed back. We run through it and we're like, oh, they must be furious about this. Yes. You know, they're angry about this.

I think we spin out. It's real. I love when, I mean, the whole notion. of, like, her identity had been stolen and these are not her charges. Like, such a great reveal of the mystery and that Marshall punches the guy at the hotel room thinking it's her boyfriend.

But I really love the scene. I mean, so obviously, Ted explodes at Marshall in that great thing where he kind of loses it. He can't take it anymore. He has to give him this tough love talking to that came out much harsher, I imagine, than he wanted it to. You had some great stuff in this episode.

You had great stuff to play and you leaned into it. Just the protection of Marshall, the arc of protecting Marshall to then running out of the patients to protect Marshall was so... It's like a little bit of a ticking time bomb, right? Like, Ted has this fuse. We're going to get to the point

where Ted can't even take it anymore and he's going to feel guilty but he was also kind of right. And Marshall thanks him for it. He does snap out of it at the end, sort of. I loved also the reality of the sweet music starts,

Ted and Marshall have it out in the bar, the sweet music starts playing and you hard cut out and you go, he wasn't better. He still woke up the next morning and was fucking miserable because that's how it is. That's how breakups are.

There was another thing that you guys did that this started to happen a lot, and you can give me more specifics about this, but when he described, Ted walks in, and he describes seeing Marshall for the first time in their dorm room and that confident guy, that absolutely feet up on the wall, you know, and then Marshall says, I was so high, I was high that day.

I was so high, I thought you were the dean, right? Yeah. I don't remember what season is, but we play that. We shot it. We went back and shot that scene. I love when we do that. We did that with the bunk bed joke in season one where it's the top of the bottom bunk moves, the top bunk's going to move to.

And these jokes that we just had stayed with us, we said, why don't we see that someday? That is the gift of being on for long enough that you can find a way back to show that joke that you said happened. And we did. We did later. I'm blanking on what season at the moment. When you rewatch the series,

people probably remember, people probably remember the scene where he says, oh, I thought you were the dean. You're not the dean, right? and Ted is giggling because he's eating a sandwich. Yeah. They probably remember that. Then they go back and watch it.

And first episode of season two, he says, oh, I was so high, I thought you were the dean. And they're like, oh, yeah, we end up seeing that later. Like, you can watch this show almost backwards and have delight in it the way, you know. But they have this great scene at the hotel that I thought was just, every once in a while, you would write a scene for me or Jason that I was like, this is a real fun gift. And I think Jason and I really appreciated those scenes where we could,

just like, be best friends in a way, not under the harsh glare of Barney. But to be the friends that had been best friends since they were 18, you know? I love the line, you can't let Lily steal your identity the way that guy stole hers. Yeah. It's so wonderful. That's my favorite line of the whole episode, I think. The way it ended, I mean, it was kind of like a beautiful, heartbreaking cliffhanger. You know, Marshall's on the road to healing his busted heart.

The gang is together. They're having, like, a great laugh. in McLaren's. And then we spot Lily through that window wanting to come in, but also something keeping her and probably seeing Marshall, you know, not doubled over in agony. But maybe the gang moved on without me. Like, we never want people to move on, you know. We don't want life to go on without us. That's a, that's a tough thought. So much of how I met her mother was a kind of withholding of information until it was time to learn it and in the most satisfying way to learn it. When When Lily sees, like, Marshall, he's having a good night.

He's at fun with his friends in the bar, and he's laughing. And she sees him laughing. She sees him okay. And she has no idea the months of agony he's been in. You know, really smart, really smart storytelling. Yeah, he seems okay. And maybe that means he doesn't need me to walk through this door. What does it mean that he seems okay?

And she can't quite do it. The end of that episode is one of my favorite moments in season two when you see Lily. And you have that great talking about needle drops. You talk about the music there, that amazing cover of Boys Don't Cry by Grant Lee Phillips, which was pitched to us by Andy Gowan, our music supervisor. Sometimes Carter and I or Josh or somebody would have the idea for a great song. This was very much Andy Gowan's pitch. Boys Don't Cry, pushing in on that table, pushing past that table of our gang to find Lily in that window. She almost comes in.

She's not ready. She turns away. I just remember in the edit room getting chills when we were putting that together and feeling like, this is going to work. We have a season two. There's stuff here, like, right? You've done one season of TV. You don't know what else is going to happen past that. We were first-time showrunners.

We knew we had stuff there. We knew we had a condition that would give us six, eight, ten episodes of that season two. And it just felt like rocket fuel there. I want to see episode two at the end of that episode. It had that cliffhangery thing of like, oh, shit, how does this, how do they get back together here? How does the gang get back together? Well, let me explain another slight change that's happening in season two. We had a bunch of bonus episodes for season one.

We're going to still do a few, perhaps, but in an effort for Craig and I to be able to spend more time with our families, we're going to be doing less bonus episodes. But we're going to try to retain the spirit of those bonus episodes, which were, of course, called general questions general questions all right still suck at bath here we are just move through it we're going to have this the inability to sync this up is not it's not human error it's technological it's technology there's just a little anyway we are we are going to do our general questions general questions it's a like you're it's your i was like i was i was i hate that it leads to finger pointing and divisiveness within the group that's my regret about

We're going to be doing that right now. So, Alec, take it away. What do you have for us? Absolutely. So you can find us at how we made your mother.com. Hit contact. You could send in a voice message. You could send in an email.

You could fill out a form. Yes. And also, by the way, these can be questions. These can be observations. And what we really like to hear, especially in the voice notes, is tell us what how I met your mother means to you, how you discovered it, how it changed your life, how, why you keep watching it, who you've, you know, turned on to the show, we want to hear all those stories. We love them. And, you know, on Instagram, I mean, I mean, there have been so many

years of people posting so many clips and memes and things that have sort of kept Himium alive. And thank you to everyone there. And we are, of course, on the social media at How We Made Your Mother. And on our Instagram is where we solicit your questions, also on the How We Made Your other fan club page on Facebook. So from the internet, Spencer Mattson says, asks, what were some of the lessons you learned while filming or writing season one that you knew you weren't to implement in season two? Did you have to do any major pivoting?

Major pivoting. This early in the series, based on how something in the first season was received. Well, I touched upon this a little bit. We were given a bit of a warning not to be too serialized, And I think we just didn't do it. We just, we sort of said, yes, okay, we'll take a look at that. But we didn't, we knew what, we knew the show's power was serialization. And the fact that the emotional through land kind of kept going.

And if you look at this episode, we take you all the way through the summer. We take you all the way through the emotional journey of the characters. I don't think, I think the biggest lesson was not to, was not to cave in and worry too much about that, was to think the fans will find this. This will find people who get it. Thank God. Thank you to the fans. Thank you to everyone who's listening to this and who watched the show because we did find you. The show did find you. And I'm proud to say I think we kept, we stayed true to the spirit of what we wanted to do with this show.

I think if we learned anything, it was like, let's dig deeper into these characters. Like we find this other weird trait of Robin in this episode, like along the way. And we find other, we just kept digging deeper into these characters and these actors. What these actors could do and these relationships and keeping, digging deeper into their history and connection, I think that was like, that was definitely something we did more of and wanted to do more of in season two. But we didn't want to mess with kind of the heart and soul of the show, which it is serialized. It just is. Josh, was there anything as an actor who now, okay, you're in season two, there's a little, maybe a little more of a, you could breathe out, you're actually doing this. This is staying on TV for a while. and with that aside, you can lean in a little more?

Was there a pressure valve released a little bit for you? Or was it the opposite? It was, oh, we're doing this now. Is it more pressure? No, I think it was less in as much as I knew they were not going to replace me with another guy to play the role. I felt like some measure of job security. I mean, we were still, you know, we were still season to season.

We weren't getting two season pickups. We were very dependent. We didn't even know if we'd get a back nine in season two at this point, right? Like, we knew we had 13. Correct. Are they going to air all 13? You got to, you know, you got to stay in the zone where they're still feeling good about it. I think that I felt really good about where Ted was.

I mean, it's certainly, like, even though it's an, you know, you're an actor, like, it's more fun to play the wiser, you know, steadier character in terms of, I mean, it can be fun to play despair and all that stuff. But I liked that Ted didn't have to be, at least in this episode, the person who was punched in the face or left at the altar, like he got to really get the girl, he got to be the good friend. Like, I thought Ted's virtues were really on display in this episode, and I think that's why I liked it so much,

was because I didn't have to open a vein, you know? Yeah, yeah, and that's another thing we learned. We put the focus on Marshall. Marshall. Marshall is the focus of the romantic quandary in this episode and in this opening arc of Season 2. And that was something we wanted to do. He said it was the spotlight was on Ted all through season one. Let's get Ted with Robin and let's take a look at the pain and struggles of somebody else here for a minute. And that was, that was exciting. It was exciting because it was a new move. And we couldn't do that when Marshall and Lily were just super couple. We needed to shake them up a bit there. At Sprat-T asks, Josh looks more tan in the season premiere. How'd you spend your time away? You know, it's so funny, I have very vivid memories of my second season hiatus, but the first season hiatus in between one and two. Oh, I know what I was. I did a, I believe I did a play in Poughkeepsie at the New York stage and film up at Vassar, which is a theater that I have worked with since I was like in college. I'm almost sure I did a play there that summer. So I was just, you know, I was an state, New York, doing theater, and going to the tanning bed many times throughout the summer. What's funny is you're tanning, you got very tan in the half hour after you came in from the rain

on the stoop. That's the weird thing about needing to sort of play that continuity. It's like, everyone looks a little different. The apartment looks a little different. I have, people often say that I look tan. I think that if I get a little bit of sun, I kind of brown up, you know, I don't burn very easily, and it's always a little shocking to people. Boy, are we different. Yes, this is, this just shows that two different species can be friends, Craig. The iris and the Jews don't share the overlap there. At Ryan Schwartz TV says, it's supposed to be the same day, but the brown couch from season one has been swapped for the red couch in the season two premiere. Why the change? Okay, I'll tell you. One, we got a bunch of notes at the end of season one, and a bunch, some of them

we agreed with. We didn't want to un-serialize the show. We wanted to keep it that way, but we did get it. I think we got a note from the network. It may have even been from Pam Fryman, too, or everybody just sort of agreed. Season one, visually, that apartment looks a little dark. And I think we, Carter and I wanted it to be like not the fancy, shiny, like the friend's apartment, huge and this sort of weird, like that purple-y kind of like, lots of like almost neon-colored things. We wanted it to be more like, this is a New York apartment. It's still too big. But we wanted it to be a plausible New York apartment. I think we probably steered our set designer

and his team towards like, let's grid it up a little bit. It doesn't need to look shiny. It doesn't need to look neon. And I think we might have gone a few clicks too far. Season one does look a little dark. The couch is a little dark. The wall's a little dark. We decided to just brighten everything up.

And we did it, hoping no one would notice. But, of course, in the interim, people are like, why the fuck is there a different couch from when they left of the apartment the night before? It's also like you were depending on four months of amnesia for people. Right. It wasn't on streaming.

You hadn't seen how much a mother since May, now it's September. People literally go from episode 22 of season one right into episode and you're like, why is the couch different? Why is the couch different, bitch? Yeah. We've heard this a lot and we will continue to hear it.

It's a great question. It is a great question. I never knew that, though. It was my goddamn fake apartment and I didn't know it was a new couch. All right, here's a little BSL. BSL. What does that word come from?

I think it's BTS mixed with ASL, which I'm always thinking about. Sorry, here's a little BTL. Behind sign language. My goodness. A little behind the scenes question from at Keenan 99. Okay. Do the actors in the background of bar and restaurant scenes actually have conversations? It seems like they mouth real words but have silent conversations.

How does that work? Literally what you just said. That's what it is. Your question answered itself, and yes, it's weird. It's generally the second AD who kind of is in charge of the background. The second AD? Generally the second AD. Extra points.

Generally. And it was Chris, right, who was our second. Oh, maybe it was the second second second. I can't remember there's a second second assistant director. But they're ordered sometimes quite harshly, like, we can hear your whispering. Like, they really have to mouth conversations. They really have to mind it. It must be the most awkward job.

in the world to show up and sit with a stranger you were just paired with pretending to talk silently to each other. But there were a couple people that, some of them were like UCLA students or like people that would show up like through the years that were like bar regulars. I'm thinking of a couple. There were a couple women that were just like really cool and they were always kind of in the bar like maybe half, three quarters of the seasons. And we got to know them because you're sitting around eating checks mix and drinking fake beer. And they were lovely. So shout out to the background actors. I always thought this job is actually harder than my job.

Like, this is a very difficult job. It's not an easy job. And at one point, Conan O'Brien did that job on our show. Yeah, we'll get to that. But, yeah. And finally, a bigger question to end with here is at Camor. At Camor says, how much of season two was planned when you ended season one as you did?

Was it a vague outline, or was it more we've set ourselves up? Let's see what comes next. It was more than that. It wasn't let's set ourselves up and see what comes next, but it certainly wasn't meticulously plotted out. I think you're looking for conditions to play. What can give us some rocket fuel for a bunch of episodes? Marshall and Lilly break up, Ted and Robin get together.

That's a condition we can play. We can get, and then how do we have fun and be really interesting within that? How do we find the twist in terms of that? But if you set out that condition, you're just kind of getting the raw material, kind of like the fuel and the rocket, and then navigating where that fuel takes you is the next step. And we probably, you know, over the summer as we were starting to break and write those scripts, we got more like plotting the navigation points on that journey.

But we knew, I think we gave ourselves a gift at the end of season one, even though season one ends sad and bittersweet, it was a gift to our future selves because we had a story to tell. We had to dig our way out of that problem. Can I ask you, Craig? So by the time we come back, like August, I don't remember, mid-August. let's say, early August, mid-August. You guys were handed episode one.

How many episodes deep are you into the writing? How many episodes have you broken? Like, where are you at that point? When you show up to that first, when the actors show up to that first table read in whatever was late August or whatever it would be, if I remember. I think it was a little early.

It was like mid-August, maybe, yeah. A little earlier, early August. We would hope to be at like six scripts, maybe five or six scripts written or degrees of written, and then the outline and the shape for a few past that. And then it just slowly, I was thought of it as like, the season of a TV is like Pac-Man eating these pellets. Okay, that episode got written and shot.

That's a pellet. And it's just coming, coming, coming. There's this thing got to bite of eating them up. And you're trying to stay as far ahead of that as you can. I realize I'm making us the ghosts in Pac-Man or something. I don't know. The metaphor is falling apart. But, yeah, we would always,

you'd want to have six scripts and a couple outlines or else you'd feel really screwed. But by the time we show up, that's the most comfortable you as the showrunner is going to feel, because you're the most ahead of it you'll ever be. Like, you're never going to be six episodes ahead the rest of the season. No, you're going to just watch that catch up to you. Watch the devouring Pac-Man Monster catch up and eat up those episodes. And, yeah, it's invigorating, shall we say. It is a marathon run at a sprint pace.

Yeah, awesome. 24 episodes. I think we did 22 in season two. and like when we became more successful, we started getting 24, but 22 is plenty. So we like to end a lot of these episodes with a letter that's been sent in to how we made your mother.com to contact.

And we got a delightful, wonderful letter from Sophie in Germany. And again, if you want to send one in, even if it doesn't make it on the air, which it might, please let us know what the show means to you and anything else you want to share with us about. We love it. It's so nice. It's so great. So this one says, hi, my name is Sophie. I am 15 years old and I live in Germany. I discovered how I met your mother pretty precisely a year ago. I was alone on a nine-hour

train ride back home from Berlin. I logged into the train Wi-Fi and a website popped up with hundreds of movies and series. For some reason, I decided to click on how I met your mother, not knowing how much I would fall in love with this show and how it would change me. I am someone who worries a lot about their future. I feel like I am missing out on all my teenage experiences, not having kissed anyone yet, or feeling like anyone will ever fall in love with me.

Every day I think about where I will be in 10 years, what job will I be doing, who I will still be with, and who I am going to lose, and if anyone is ever going to love me the way Ted loves. Saying that makes me feel guilty of thinking so much about myself, knowing what is happening to the world, in politics, climate change, AI, social media. The list goes on. I often feel like the whole world is just going under, and that's just what my

future will be like. All of these thoughts have taken up a lot of space the last four years, but since I met Ted Marshall, Lily, Robin, and Barney, the hope of everything eventually working out has been fighting the darker thoughts. How I met your mother comforts me in a way nothing else does. It taught me how important friendships are, but I have to let things change, and that every phase of your life, it's important, and will lead you to something. So thank you, Josh and Craig. Thank you so much for creating something that brings me hope that makes me laugh and cry, and that will always have a special place in my heart. That's beautiful. My God, Sophie, you were the wisest 15-year-old. I think I've ever met. We're really honored. The show has

meant that to you. And yeah, thank you for sharing that with us. Yeah, Sophie, I just want to say, I mean, you sound like you have an enormous heart. And I often find that about people that love how I met your mother. They're just very deeply feeling people. And I think that as you demonstrate in your letter, you can hold many things in your awareness at any given time. You can hold the pain and uncertainty of the world, the collective, the, you know, what's going on in the larger kind of landscape, as well as your own thoughts and feeling.

and hurts and yearnings, and we can hold all of that. I'm reminded of something that I think it's in one of Elizabeth Gilbert's books or talks. She talks about in a refugee camp in some war-torn country, and it was just a terrible situation, and this person had gotten to know some of the young kids in this refugee camp, and they were all talking about who has a crush on who. And they were still, you know, even in this dire humanitarian situation, They were still wanted love and they still wanted to know who liked them and did they like, you know, who they liked. And that was still of interest to meet them. So I don't think that worrying about the world and being concerned about your own future and will you find someone to love and someone to love you. And I don't think those are mutually exclusive. I think that humans, we can hold all of that. And even though how I met your mother was not a directly political show, I think there is something political. about being a good friend

and showing up for people and being loyal and those things are needed in our society. Ted says love is the best thing we do. It's a somewhat a political statement on some level if you want to get granular about it. So I think we can do all those things. I don't think you have to feel bad about any of that. I am guilty.

Please acquit me. All sins are forgiven. in New York City How We Made Your Mother is hosted and executive produced by Josh Radner and Craig Thomas and is presented and distributed by the Office Ladies Network

and Odyssey. This episode is also executive produced by Jenna Fisher and Angela Kinsey. The show is produced and edited by me, Alec Leav, and our co-producer is Doug Matica. Our audio producer and mixer is Alex Reeves at Pointe to Blue Studios.

Digital content producer, aka Gen Z Master, is Emily Blumberg. Artwork by John Morrow. Please follow, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts or your podcast player of choice. It really does help the show. Our theme song is New York City by our own Josh Radner, with additional music by Craig Thomas and Andrew Majuski. Special thanks to Lola Kennedy and Elliot Connors.

Visit How We Made Your Mother.com to learn more and click on the contact page to send us an email or a voice message. Your stories and questions are an important part of the show. Subscribe to Josh Radner's newsletters on Substack and check out his music and everything else at Josh Radner.com. Order Craig Thomas' debut novel, That's Not How It Happened, wherever books are sold, and check out his other published writings at cragthomaswriter.com.

And you can subscribe to my own Dead Father's Society, also on Substack. To learn more about how you make a difference, this show's ongoing campaign to raise money for congenital pediatric heart disease research, check out the Make a Difference tab at the top of our website. People will, in fact, dance. The real question, it just hit me. Am I in love with you or just New York City? Thank you.