How We Made Your Mother Meets World (PART 2)

00:00:20
Speaker 1: Welcome to a special Bonus episode, Part two with Josh and Craig enjoy Well. One of the things I wanted to talk to you guys about specifically for your podcast is, Josh, I heard you on Jesse Tyler Ferguson's podcast talk about how doing the Rewatch has been very healing for how critical you have sometimes been about your own participation or performance on the show. And that's something that I know, especially for writer, is something he has experienced as well. Can you talk with us a little bit more about what the Rewatch has done for the way you look back on the show?

00:00:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, you know, I think that.

00:00:59
Speaker 3: I come from the theater, right and and that those are That's how I fell in love with acting, and that's where I kind of thought of myself, like that's where I'm a theater actor.

00:01:08
Speaker 2: And the blessing of the theater is it goes away.

00:01:11
Speaker 3: You know, you do it and it evanesses into the air, and then you come back, you do it again and no one's like, this is what you look like last night, this is what you did, or this is when you didn't hit that line or moment and there was something you know I had done.

00:01:24
Speaker 2: I think it was my fourth pilot.

00:01:26
Speaker 3: I had done a bunch of guest stars, so I had done some on camera work, and I was still acquainting myself with my face, you know what I looked like. And you know when you're a kid and you hear your voice on tape for the first time, you're like, so that way, Yeah it's grotesque. Yeah, it's like it's like.

00:01:44
Speaker 4: They had that experience, but in front of thirty million people. But I think it took me.

00:01:50
Speaker 3: I had some time to I needed some time to acquaint myself with like, Okay, this is what I look like and this is what my body is. And I was I was having to everyone else, even including Kobe, had just they had made more peace, I think with themselves or weren't as self conscious as me for some reason. But I remember, especially in those early seasons, I was very hard on myself and I didn't even watch all the episodes. But sometimes I would be like pleasantly surprised, and other times.

00:02:19
Speaker 5: I'd be like, oh, I hate that.

00:02:20
Speaker 2: I hate that. And just watching watching the.

00:02:25
Speaker 3: Show again all these years later with my wife and where my life is now, I have this detachment, like I'm watching it from a distance, and I'm so I almost am like in dialogue with that younger actor who was so hard on himself, and I'm like, I almost like like I sit him down and be like, you did a great job. He did a great job. And I thought in certain ways that the value of my performance, or the worth in my performance, was based on whether that joke was funny, whether I had a good ale, a bad episode, nail to beat. But but the truth is, and I think, Will, this is what you're talking about, Like, when it's perfectly cast, it's almost like your essence is doing.

00:03:09
Speaker 2: A lot of the work.

00:03:10
Speaker 5: Yes, you're just showing up.

00:03:12
Speaker 3: You're just showing up, and like it's the five of us around a booth and for whatever reason, that works, and I see that the show works and it and I was a vital part of that working. And in some ways, my naivete and my like very young face even though I was twenty nine or thirty when we started, like I had a really young face and I had a really like vulnerable, like open quality that they cast me for that I wasn't even in control of in a way, So I just have made some peace with like I understand why people love this show. I understand why this show worked and wormed its way into so many people's hearts, and I'm I'm walking around like even Jordana said, you're a lot different. Like since the podcast has been on, when people come up to you and want to talk about how I met mother, I can tell you're different. It's a much more like engage way. And I just had to make some peace with it. I thought that when I got off the show, I have to run as far from this show as I can, But the truth was I actually had to turn around and hug the show closer to me and say, this is a part of my life, this is a part of my biography, this will always be with me, and let's stop like running from it and just like love it because it was wonderful.

00:04:23
Speaker 6: That's now, curiously, does does you know I know she'd lie to you because she loves you. But does your wife like the show?

00:04:30
Speaker 3: She loves the show and not, but she's a binger, so she's like she doesn't like watching one a week.

00:04:37
Speaker 5: It's like she's having to like.

00:04:38
Speaker 2: Go back to, you know, the old days. I didn't like it.

00:04:41
Speaker 3: She wants to keep watching, and if we have to watch too. She gets really excited, but she.

00:04:46
Speaker 2: Is mirroring you know.

00:04:47
Speaker 3: There was I remember there was an episode first season, and I think I talked about in the podcast Craig where Jordana turned to me and she goes, I'm totally in Yeah, Like there was an episode where she was like super invested in everyone and I am. That's probably when the audience got invested. I was like five six the medicine starts like taking Yeah.

00:05:09
Speaker 4: I was so terrified, Like I was like, what if she doesn't like the show. This whole podcast was because she.

00:05:14
Speaker 6: Says away, we'd be she'd be on our podcast right now, going so I'm doing a podcast about how.

00:05:19
Speaker 7: I hate my husband.

00:05:23
Speaker 8: Companion piece.

00:05:25
Speaker 3: Well, she was actually she's she's taking some time off. But on the first season she was a guest star in every episode we had what was it called crack. It was called Questions and Observations from a clinical psychologist who's never seen how I Met your mother, who also happens to be married to Josh.

00:05:39
Speaker 2: We whole acronyms, and she was great because she One of the things.

00:05:44
Speaker 3: We're really doing on the show that I really love is we're we're getting underneath it like we're really excavating it.

00:05:48
Speaker 2: It's almost like a college class. And like how I met your mother?

00:05:52
Speaker 3: Miss you know she really she's quite a deep, you know person, and she sees like she is a PhD. And you know her thesis was on the connection between love and death, which is like a great thing for How I met your mother? You know, yeah, she so she she lent a lot of GRAVI toss I think to the first season and we've been getting some letters people are missing her.

00:06:14
Speaker 2: So back in Man.

00:06:30
Speaker 1: Now on the flip side, is there anything for either one of you that's given you a little bit of PTSD that you've seen it and you're like, oh god, I remember that week or I remember that bit and and and it's made you feel.

00:06:43
Speaker 8: Not so warm and fuzzy.

00:06:44
Speaker 7: It gives you the ick.

00:06:46
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, yeah, there have there have been a few things that you know, twenty years later, like play insensitively in wish that I'm like, I just we wouldn't have written that now, And you're aware of the twenty years noss of it all. Yeah, you know, like, oh, we all change, the world changes, we all grow up, we all know how to say when you.

00:07:05
Speaker 5: Know better, you do better. We know better now.

00:07:08
Speaker 4: There are certain jokes that we made, and thank god, they're fairly few and far between, but there are some where you're like, oh, I don't remember ever, I can't I can't imagine I.

00:07:18
Speaker 5: Ever thought that was a good thing to say.

00:07:21
Speaker 4: And there's been a few of those that leap out, and we've really tried to own them on our podcast and really talk about them and say, like, we wouldn't say this now, and we're aware that these clunker lines are out in the world. They're circulating right alongside all the other parts we're really proud of, and it's really complicated, but you have to own it.

00:07:42
Speaker 5: You have to go like, this is what it's almost.

00:07:44
Speaker 4: It is healing in a weird way to go back and go, oh, this thing that's bothered me for a while, I'm happy to have this place where I can admit it.

00:07:52
Speaker 3: We got We often start the episodes of How We Made Your Mother with like an audio letter that someone sent in like an audio voice about like what the show means to them. And we got this letter that was just such a heartbreaker and it was so beautiful. Yeah, and it was from a trans person who said I loved How I Met your Mother, even when I felt like How I Met your Mother didn't love me.

00:08:15
Speaker 2: Wow, And it was.

00:08:16
Speaker 3: So moving and it was about we we we linked it up with an episode where there was a word that that Creg was just really upset that we used. It was kind of just a silly joke. It didn't even need to be in there, like a plot dependent joke or something, but it led Craig and I. I actually, really it's one of my favorite things we've recorded, Craig. It's like we had a really deep discussion about words and comedy and the power of words and the misuse of words. And you know, there's a lot of you know, people fighting to say certain words, and Craig has you know, you can talk about this or not, Craig, but like, you know, Craig has written beautifully about the use of certain words. And I think if you're doing comedy, the rules and the you know, standards in society change, and they should like I don't think it's like you should be we should be like it should we should always be able to say whatever it's like. No, Actually, a whole community has risen up on mass and said please stop using that word, and we should listen to them.

00:09:25
Speaker 9: Culture is evolving, languages evolving.

00:09:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's tricky in comedy because you know, part of comedy is barriers, pushing and leaning into certain stereotypes and all this stuff. But it's tricky, and I feel like we, uh, there were certain things that we didn't It's not only that Carter and Craig didn't think about it. There were no objections to it at the sure, you know. So I think there is a kind of like appropriate reflection and atoning that feels like really appropriate and good.

00:09:57
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:09:57
Speaker 6: I mean, it's all you can do is is reflect the society that you live in at the time, and then it's okay to look back and be like, wow, thank god, that's not what it's like anymore.

00:10:07
Speaker 3: And yeah, yeah, and I think you know, I wrote and directed this movie, the first movie I've directed, called Happy, Thank You More Please, And there's a moment in there where it's a scene between me and Pablo Schreiber and my character talks about a writer told him that every five years, you realize what an asshole you were five years ago, and it keeps happening every five years. And I think this is actually a good sign that you're growing, because you should look back on your former self with like a bit of a blush and a bit of a like, why did I doubt? Why did I say that? Because it means you're you're updating yourself.

00:10:39
Speaker 4: And I'm so grateful. Josh reference that a message from this trans person who was so generous to us, who said a couple times in series there were jokes that used what was then kind of a word people threw around in comedy circle sometimes that is that is actually a word that really hurts our community. And I was so grateful to this person for their general rosity towards us to say, I still love your show, and a couple of things in there really hurt me. I during how much mother I had my son who has disabilities. He has a rare genetics syndrome, and he was born between your two and three of how much your mother, and it changed so much of my life and how I see the world and how you know, I've become like this disability rights advocate because I love my son so much and I wanted I want to help educate people on how to talk about and think about disability in our culture and in pop culture. I just published a novel that is actually got comedic novel kind of about this, about this journey.

00:11:34
Speaker 10: It's amazing.

00:11:35
Speaker 3: It's called this Is That's Not How It Happened by Craig Thomas, and just really check it out.

00:11:40
Speaker 2: And I did the audio book. I am amazing at it.

00:11:45
Speaker 4: It's it's a comedy about the journey of being a parent of a kid with the disability while also working in Hollywood, which is kind of reflective of what my experience was like while working on How Much Mother. And that's all that's all to say, Like it got me thinking so so much more deeply and introspectively about what did we say and do on nine years of television episodes that may have stepped on people's toes that we didn't even know we were doing because I didn't know how important it was to not say the R word for the disability community things like that until I was very much living. You know, my heart was in the disability community, my son, and so it just it's it's okay to admit what you didn't know then, sure, and it's okay to admit that you can improve things now. And whenever we get this kind of feedback on how much your mother from somebody, We just we try to own it and say like thank you for letting us know that. And now we have this place to talk about it with our podcast, which which is great because we we you know, we like get moved to tears sometimes talking about it where we're still moved by again the generosity of people who stuck with the show even if sometimes we got things wrong.

00:12:50
Speaker 6: Well, we're gonna we're going to steal that idea and we're going to open every pod meets World now with a letter about how somebody loved how I met your.

00:13:01
Speaker 3: You guys must you guys must like hear from people and it's just incredible right to have been a part of something that was so meaningful to people.

00:13:11
Speaker 6: The thing that's really cool for us is, I mean, obviously we hear from a ton of people email wise, and we get the letters and all that kind of stuff, but we also do the convention circuit, so we get to go out there and meet the fans face to face, and those are the ones where it's they'll just walk up to you and they're holding it together.

00:13:27
Speaker 10: And then they burst into tears.

00:13:28
Speaker 6: And it's like, especially because our show targeted such a young audience. Yeah, there's a lot of these kids did not have good lives, and something like Boy Meets World was the thing that was they had a twenty two minute escape from whatever the hell they lived in. And it's really powerful when somebody comes up and just says, you have no idea what you did for me.

00:13:47
Speaker 10: I mean, it really really matters quite a bit. I was busy.

00:13:51
Speaker 3: Phillips had a talk show for like a year or two, and I was a guest on it, and she always ended the show by saying right into the camera, she say I love you, right, And she said because she did it one night and she got a letter from someone who said, you're the only person who says that to me in my life. So she was very committed to saying it every night, if only just.

00:14:12
Speaker 2: For that person, for that one person.

00:14:15
Speaker 3: And yeah, I mean I get so moved at realizing that I was like a big part of people's like formast years, you know, and people say like, you taught me that it's okay to have feelings, and you taught me that it's okay to fail, and that there might be a bigger plan, you know, all these kind of big how I met your mother lessons that were recurring themes, and I think, yeah, I didn't like how I was in episode three of season four or what you know what I mean, like I can do that. But the truth is, like I was just a part of something that meant a lot to a lot of people, and not everyone gets that.

00:14:52
Speaker 5: It's a real honor.

00:14:52
Speaker 4: I mean, you guys, I know your guys show was like that to people, right, And when you hear about it now, isn't it doesn't make.

00:14:57
Speaker 5: You feel good. You feel like, my god, we did this thing.

00:15:00
Speaker 4: We didn't even know what we were doing when we were doing it, and it's something that has made people feel less alone, or more seen or more connected.

00:15:08
Speaker 5: It's a great honor, really.

00:15:10
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:15:10
Speaker 1: And you hear a lot about wish fulfillment on like a kid's show, you know, and the wish fulfillment is, oh, I wish I had magical powers or I wish I was super rich, And for both of our shows, there's a lot of wish fulfillment, but it's stuff like I wish my best friend was that loyal, I wish I had parents who cared about me, I wish I had a girlfriend that loved me, you know, it's like those It's that kind of And that's the.

00:15:37
Speaker 8: Thing that we were able to give to people.

00:15:39
Speaker 1: Is I envisioned that you were my friends and now doing the podcast for all of us. I don't think any of us could have predicted Will Writer or myself how much we have enjoyed letting people get to know Will, Danielle and Writer. Whereas for our entire careers, people have just thought of us as Eric to Panga and Sean, And now when they come up to us and they've been listening to six seasons of a podcast, they really know us, and that has been so rewarding.

00:16:15
Speaker 8: Have you Josh felt that way?

00:16:17
Speaker 1: That letting people get to know Josh has felt even more rewarding than all the accolades of note being known as Ted?

00:16:27
Speaker 3: I mean, that's such a landmine in terms of identity and what is my name?

00:16:34
Speaker 5: Like, I don't know if you.

00:16:35
Speaker 3: Guys know this, Like every April I start getting happy birthday messages my birthdays in July, but I guess at some point they dropped that Ted Moseby's birthday was in April, and I'm like, this isn't my birthday? Like it's such a that's I always find that to be supremely strange. I think in some ways, all of my work, I mean, you have to risk, you know, your first challenge in show business is getting known for anything, you know, just getting work. Then if you're on a show like ours, your next challenge is to differentiate yourself or make another move, or get into something else where you can diversify or broaden. And a lot of my work has just been about what doesn't feel like How I met your mother. Like I was offered a number of you know, single guys in the city looking for love after How I met your Mother, and I wouldn't do any of them, of course, because I had thoroughly explored that archetype. You know, I would take roles that felt really different and really strange. You know, I always appreciate it when people come up to me and you know, call me Josh and recognize that I was an actor on a show, because there is people form such parasocial relationships with you that the fact that you are not named Ted born in April is actually it hurts their field. It's their feelings that their friend is not really real and that Neil and I aren't rolling around New York City together, you know, like they're mad about it. But I think that, you know, I just honor that it's tricky sometimes.

00:18:16
Speaker 2: Reality gets tricky for people around this stuff.

00:18:19
Speaker 3: But I think that for me and again, you know, marrying someone who had never seen the show or I mean most of my community now, I don't. I have one friend who's now a dear friend who grew up in Iran, in Tehran until he was fifteen, and he learned to speak English from scrubs and how I met your mother. Yeah, I'm sure you guys have heard that.

00:18:40
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, And.

00:18:42
Speaker 3: He didn't reveal that to me for like the first two years of our friendship, which I thought was really cool. But you know, there's just I think I don't know. Are you guys anyagram people? Do you know what the enneagram is?

00:18:55
Speaker 10: Yes?

00:18:55
Speaker 8: I know about the animal Okay.

00:18:57
Speaker 3: So it's like this personality classification system and it's nine different personality.

00:19:01
Speaker 7: Oh, I think, Daniel, try to.

00:19:06
Speaker 3: Like you, but one of them, I'm actually a mix of a three and a four, and a three is the achiever. And it's this kind of thing of like the wound is like you don't feel like your love for who you are, you feel your love for what you do right, and that that's very hard.

00:19:23
Speaker 2: A lot of Hollywood people are threes, you know what I mean.

00:19:25
Speaker 3: It's like it's like I got to keep I gotta do the next right, the next big thing, or I'm not worthy enough. But a four is called the individualist and it's and it's our biggest fear is kind of being having our identity or uniqueness flattened. You know that you won't be valued for our uniqueness. And I found that being thought of or called a name or a character that I am actually not was really like hurt my four, Like it hurt that part of me that needed to be like myself, like truly myself. And then I've talked with Craig a lot about this, like I'm and maybe you guys have something analogous that happened on your show, but the pilot is like that just came from Carter and Craig's imagination. But then they get these actors and they start like I do crossroad puzzles, so I would often do crossrod puzzles on them, but Carter also does cross so suddenly there were crossword puzzle jokes, right, and then there were I'm a big reader, and then there were reading jokes. And then Ted was intellectual, but he was kind of ridiculed for being an intellect, which I I like, love ideas and philosophy and all this stuff. And I always felt and I talked a lot about this is a crag. I'm not spoiling anything, but I sometimes felt like there were things I really loved and valued about myself that they took. Again, you're just writer, I put it into Ted, and then people I was ridiculed for them. And then I would recommend a book on Twitter and people be, You're just like Ted.

00:20:47
Speaker 2: I was like, because I read books.

00:20:48
Speaker 5: Like this is insane, right.

00:20:52
Speaker 7: They're both exactly the same.

00:20:53
Speaker 3: Well, it just gave me like this kind of identity crisis where I was really struggling. But I think I'm I'm largely past it, like I've spent so many years. And I will say, marrying a woman who is a psychologist, Like when I tried to explain this to her, she understood it in such a like bone deep, cellular way, and I remember her putting her hand on my arm in one of our first dates and saying, you can complain to me about this as much as you want. And it was so beautiful because it normally you feel like, well, I want to be grateful. I don't want to, you know, spit in the face of this thing. But it is disorienting and it does produce a kind of vertigo. And I don't know, maybe just for me and Rider, I don't know, like it could not other people I think might deal with this or be less introspective or kind of beat themselves up around this.

00:21:44
Speaker 2: But for me it was really hard.

00:21:47
Speaker 3: And that's why the podcast and the marriage have been great.

00:21:50
Speaker 5: Yeah, and one came out of the other.

00:21:52
Speaker 4: Rider, how where I have to know? Where are you and you're making peace with us? Looking back on it, I think you were the one that had seen the least of your your own show. Of the three of you guys, right, where are you now having gone through it? Like, where do you find that healing or forgiveness that Josh is talking about?

00:22:07
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:22:08
Speaker 9: Exactly, Yeah, No, this has been it. I mean, this is the podcast has been it for me. I mean it was like perfect midlife crisis, like you know it and Josh you put it perfectly when you said, you know, hugging that former self like that's basically what this has been for me. And then now, yeah, when people recognize me, like I used to just run away, like I would literally run away, like I would avoid being recognized, I'd avoid everything.

00:22:32
Speaker 5: And now I.

00:22:33
Speaker 9: Can just be like, Wow, this is really great and this is such a cool thing. And when people connect with me because of the character, I'm just grateful. Now I'm just like cool man, Like that's awesome. And a lot of it is, you know, just letting go of that ego. And I feel it's hard because part of being an actor is that you just have to embrace these characters and and you know, but I feel like Josh, I hear you're saying, like I think I've started in theater too, and I feel like there's something to being able to just like forget that it ever happened, to move on to the next project and play the next role that television doesn't allow especially popular. When you're on a show this popular, right, like it permanently cements you. And in some ways it's the worst thing that can happen to you as an actor, it's the best thing in that you're successful, You've done the thing, and hopefully you earned it because you're doing a great job, but then it ruins you for the next however many years, because you can't do the thing that you want to do, which is play a completely different character or or bring parts of you to something without people being like, oh, you're doing the same thing you did on that show. Like you just want to be able to reinvent that's the fun of acting. That's why I had to stop acting.

00:23:42
Speaker 5: You know. And I feel like part of it is because I started so.

00:23:45
Speaker 9: Young, you know, Like I think if I had been in my twenties, I might have been able to wrap my head around the idea like.

00:23:51
Speaker 5: This, this could happen, and you know, but it's.

00:23:53
Speaker 9: You know, for me, it's like it's kind of broken permanently, like it's too But now I love writing, I love directing. I get the same high that I do from acting from that because it's the same process.

00:24:03
Speaker 5: But I don't have to be with myself. Yeah, I have to be the one doing.

00:24:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, we should have lunch.

00:24:10
Speaker 7: Oh that'd be such a depressing lunch. Sandwichever you don't get us, will I don't.

00:24:19
Speaker 6: I walk up every day like this is the best thing that ever happened.

00:24:22
Speaker 2: What do you don't know about like internal family systems.

00:24:24
Speaker 10: I f s.

00:24:25
Speaker 8: I know, I know, yes, Janiel, Now we have.

00:24:28
Speaker 2: To have another lunch for me, just about all that therapist are going to have lunch.

00:24:34
Speaker 3: But it's this idea that there are different parts of ourselves that are that are active. You know, there's a fifteen year old and a five year old and all these different parts and they're still active, and they still sometimes come over and take us over and take over our face. And I actually it's helped me to think of Ted as a part. It's both a chart I played and it's a.

00:24:54
Speaker 2: Part of me. Not to deny it. But the thing that.

00:24:58
Speaker 3: I will probably never stopped fighting for is the recognition that it's a part of me, it's not the whole of me, and that there's what I was really fighting for was dimensionality.

00:25:08
Speaker 2: And I felt like I was collapsed.

00:25:10
Speaker 3: Into this small, bordered kind of guy that I didn't even write.

00:25:16
Speaker 2: You know, it would be one thing if I wrote the part.

00:25:18
Speaker 3: It was just like I sometimes want to say to people, like I was contractually obligated to do that, man.

00:25:23
Speaker 6: Like that.

00:25:27
Speaker 7: I could.

00:25:28
Speaker 6: But you know what, you also realize though, that's one of the things that I love about television is you've also discovered, or we as actors have discovered, if you get this opportunity the key to immortality, and that I you know, my favorite show ever is mash We talk about it all the time.

00:25:42
Speaker 5: I'm doing a mass rewatch right now. I will talk to you whatever. I know it backwards for ways.

00:25:52
Speaker 6: I know every single line of every single episode. And while McLean, Stevenson, Wayne Rogers, Loretta Switt they're gone, but Hot Lips and Henry Blake and Trapper they're alive forever.

00:26:05
Speaker 7: And I can go and watch them whenever I want to.

00:26:08
Speaker 6: So Ted Moseby one hundred and fifty years from now is still very much going to.

00:26:13
Speaker 7: Be alive, And well will I be or no, We're gonna be gone. But that's the joy. That's the joy. I mean, it's it's people talk about how I how do I last forever?

00:26:22
Speaker 2: Well?

00:26:22
Speaker 6: Television is one of those ways of you, A part of you will be around forever.

00:26:28
Speaker 7: Yeah.

00:26:28
Speaker 3: But I look at like where I live in Brooklyn, there's like a on Atlantic, there's like a maybe Flatbush, but there's like a general like a like a statue sure or named you know, streets named it, and I'm like, I don't, no one cares.

00:26:43
Speaker 9: Like.

00:26:47
Speaker 5: Our show is funnier than that guy's show.

00:26:50
Speaker 2: But I heard Albert Brooks, like a theater actor, said to him, you know.

00:26:56
Speaker 3: You do film, so you're gonna live last forever, and he's like, no, we're all going away. And I'll give you an example I did. I did this show with al Pacino for two years called Hunters. It was a great show, Nazi hunting show set in the seventies, and I would tell young people I'm working with al Pacino and.

00:27:15
Speaker 2: They would say who.

00:27:17
Speaker 5: Of course.

00:27:18
Speaker 2: So what I'm saying is like, do you know what I'm saying?

00:27:20
Speaker 6: Said but no, But that's not exactly my point because if you said to those save same young people, I'm working with Scarface, they know exactly who we're talking about.

00:27:28
Speaker 7: The character is still alive.

00:27:30
Speaker 6: Al Pacino might disappear, But saying godfather I'm working with.

00:27:35
Speaker 3: I guess that the differences is that I am on set making the things, so I think of myself as an actor playing a character, of course, Whereas you know, Jordana and I have a joke like she'll watch like a Viking show and I'll say, like they get smoothies at Airwan. No, she's like you like they get smoothie at Airwon. They you know, they're two dollars right off of the bone and tasting life. That's Lewis, That is the case.

00:28:07
Speaker 9: He's literally weaving his own clothing to play Lincoln exactly.

00:28:13
Speaker 4: It was a Game of Thrones episode where you saw Starbucks Starbucks, ye.

00:28:19
Speaker 7: God, go watch Braveheart.

00:28:20
Speaker 6: There's guys walking in the background of almost every scene in Braveheart with baseball hats on the cars in the background. It's it's amazing, hilarious, just briefly because it is my love. Do you think there's any chance that sitcom like How I Met Your Mother, like a Boy Meets World, like any of the shows that I grew up watching or loving, has a chance of coming back and being as popular as they were.

00:28:53
Speaker 5: I just think the fact that no one does twenty two or twenty four episodes anymore. It's eight episodes and people watch them in three seconds and then they go a year later it comes back and think, oh I forgot about the show or two years later. I think that has ruined the reach, right. You just can't replicate that feeling even Jordana. I was thinking about this one.

00:29:13
Speaker 4: Josh was saying that Jordana had being forced to watch one episode at a time, Josh.

00:29:17
Speaker 5: Good night before we're going to record our podcast.

00:29:19
Speaker 4: She's having to experience that the show in the way that it originally was experienced.

00:29:23
Speaker 5: But she but she, I don't know.

00:29:26
Speaker 4: There's something to it, I think, and I feel like it's hard to replicate that with these Bingi things. And by the way, I love the people binge on at your mother and have watched it thirty times, and they watched twenty in a day or whatever. But I think that thing that our show's had where people waited a week and they couldn't wait till the night Friday night to watch your show. I'm going to sit down with my family Friday night and then late nineteen nineties or whatever it is and watch Boy Meets World.

00:29:49
Speaker 5: That that thing is gone.

00:29:51
Speaker 4: That's gone except for sporting events, and I don't know how to get it back.

00:29:54
Speaker 3: I wish, So I do have to say, you know, so everything got adamized right into stream network TV kind of createred big hit shows now or a fraction of the numbers we were doing back in the day, and then you have this binging thing. But then the streamers were like, you know what, it's actually fun for people to wait a week to watch, So.

00:30:16
Speaker 2: You're seeing more of that happen.

00:30:17
Speaker 3: Yes, And then I'm watching stuff on Amazon and there's commercials. Yeah, like there's just event And then they're like, well, you can bundle all the streamers together. Yeah, that's called cable. Like you're inventing television exactly. So I think there were some things that the twentieth century kind of figured out.

00:30:41
Speaker 5: They rebuilt it that.

00:30:43
Speaker 3: We try to like pull them apart, and then we reinvent them and then we're like, Okay, I guess I guess that model.

00:30:48
Speaker 2: Was good and fun for people.

00:30:50
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, maybe that's the answer.

00:30:52
Speaker 4: Maybe it will, Maybe it is evolving back to where it will become the thing that captured all these people's minds and hearts. That doesn't seem to be happening in the same way anymore.

00:31:00
Speaker 3: I will say, though, seven eight nine year runs, I don't know, Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

00:31:05
Speaker 4: Yeh, twenty two a year, twenty four years, a nine year run.

00:31:09
Speaker 5: It's a bit that's a big beast, right.

00:31:11
Speaker 6: I mean, even back in the day with all the best shows ever. We talked about this lot on our podcast. It's very difficult to find a show that got better as the longer it went on.

00:31:20
Speaker 5: That's true that you're stretching. You're stretching at times.

00:31:24
Speaker 6: Yeah, so there's you do find maybe some maybe two three seasons is the is kind of the sweet spot.

00:31:29
Speaker 7: Now.

00:31:29
Speaker 3: We're actually shocked at the first two seasons how many like banger episodes there were, Like we came out of the gate really like having a voice and knowing everyone.

00:31:39
Speaker 2: Knew kind of what their their the.

00:31:41
Speaker 3: Task at hand was, and I'm pretty delighted that we came out so strong.

00:31:46
Speaker 1: For Boy Meets World, we had a similar thing in the sense that because we started when we were so young, over seven seasons, it's almost like there were three different.

00:31:54
Speaker 8: Versions of the show.

00:31:55
Speaker 1: They're like the first two years are very much elementary and junior high school kids really figuring out the world, and then there's like high school and then it was like, all right, now these kids are in college and there are more adults, and so we had like we got to evolve three different times.

00:32:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do have to say, because I was in college in grad school when you guys were on, which was not heavy TV watching gears for me, but my younger sister. I told her I was doing this podcast and she's like, I never missed an episode, every single.

00:32:25
Speaker 8: Every single that's nice. Tell her. We said, hello, what's her name?

00:32:29
Speaker 2: Joanna?

00:32:30
Speaker 5: Joanna?

00:32:32
Speaker 2: She'll be delighted, awome.

00:32:34
Speaker 5: I was just curious, ask one other question for you guys.

00:32:36
Speaker 4: Josh and I were talking about this that idea of he's watching his younger self twenty years ago, and there's scenes where he's like, I don't remember doing that with my body. I know that's me and I'm saying those things and doing those things, but I forgot it existed. I feel like I heard you guys say that, and you're one of those your podcasts you were like, I don't remember. I know there's visual proof that I'm doing this thing. Is there that weird out of body vertigo for you guys doing this rewatch thing? Be cause I feel Josh is having a little bit of that at times, is that it seems like such a strange thing to look back at yourself, especially when you're a kid.

00:33:06
Speaker 10: More it is.

00:33:07
Speaker 6: The thing that's amazing too, is a lot of times what I'm finding that's very, very strange is that we'll have an episode that none of us remember.

00:33:15
Speaker 7: And that's the thing that seems to be happening more and more. It's not like one of us is like, I remember everything about this and the other two are going, wow, I don't remember. It's usually the three of us going do you remember this at all?

00:33:25
Speaker 2: No? Nothing.

00:33:26
Speaker 9: Now, going back to something Josh was talking about, like way earlier on in this conversation about seeing your past performances, I'll often find when I remember, oh, I cared about that beat or I thought that that beat was important, it's the worst acting. Yeah, it's the ones that I didn't think about, where I was completely unself conscious and just showing up that I'm the most proud of now because I'm like, wow, I was just in it, and like, it's actually a great lesson as an actor, because it's very hard to learn. If you're smart at all, you're gonna like want to analyze the text and come out make choices as an actor. But what you realize ultimately as you get older, at least I have, is that that's not the best acting. The best acting is when you can make all the choices and then just let them go.

00:34:09
Speaker 3: Truly when you when when you finish it, take and you're like, that was some great acting almost it was, Yeah, I noticed because we had a thing like a policy on set. We didn't like it on sitcoms when people would say objectively hilarious things and none of the characters would act like something. So we decided we would laugh at each other. Like we're sitting in a bar, we're drinking beer. We're gonna laugh if someone says something funny. And some of my favorite moments are watching me actually laugh like an honest response or just like just listening in like an un self conscious way. I totally get what you're describing, writer.

00:34:50
Speaker 1: We have experienced that too, where we can tell in scenes when we were just trying to make each other laugh, where saber marines are, or like you know those awkward moments and sitcoms where people are exiting at the same time people are entering, and do they acknowledge each other as they pass because we know each other, but like the scene needs to progress forward. And there was one Christmas episode where people are where some of us are exiting and some of us are entering, and you can tell we just decided to go wild with the like way too minute.

00:35:24
Speaker 9: It's like we crammed five minutes of dialogue into two seconds.

00:35:28
Speaker 8: We're all breaking but trying not to break, and it's.

00:35:31
Speaker 3: Just there's the show you're making for the audience at home, and then there's the show or the ecosystem you're all living in that you're trying like. We had a first a d Mike Shay was an incredible guy.

00:35:47
Speaker 5: Do you know we didn't know that?

00:35:50
Speaker 1: We also share the writer trivia question, who's the reader show?

00:35:53
Speaker 5: Help us up? Help us, help us out? You've blown my mind.

00:36:02
Speaker 3: We share either and we have a special guest that'd be unbelievable.

00:36:07
Speaker 5: Michael Story. I wanted to hear Okay, So Michael, Yeah, I forgot that to.

00:36:15
Speaker 3: So Michael Sheay to when he wanted everyone to quiet down, he would say, guys, guys, guys, do.

00:36:21
Speaker 2: You remember this of course?

00:36:22
Speaker 3: Or so whenever for once we hooked into this, whenever it just said, guys, we should go whatever, Like whenever the word guys was there.

00:36:31
Speaker 2: You'll watch How I Met Your Mother and you'll hear guys, guys, guys. We just always say.

00:36:35
Speaker 3: Three times as an homage to our Michael, our beloved Michael.

00:36:39
Speaker 7: He would always say things to us like we still joke.

00:36:41
Speaker 6: So our our first a d and first stage manager's name was Steve, and at one point he and his wife got pregnant, and so we just hear Michael Shay going like, all right, everybody, come on, let's get the scene ready.

00:36:52
Speaker 4: Steve's having a baby.

00:36:57
Speaker 3: Baby, No, how to run a good thing.

00:37:02
Speaker 2: He keeps it funny and like it.

00:37:05
Speaker 5: Podcast we have.

00:37:07
Speaker 9: It was so great because we asked him about this and he's just said he said, like he because you know, his father was a big TV director and so he grew up knowing that he had to keep the energy on set going, and so he would just look at it as like his job was, Hey, everybody, we're all gonna just freshen it up, and I'm gonna say something stupid to get everybody's at and.

00:37:26
Speaker 5: We're like, dude.

00:37:26
Speaker 3: It totally worked when we had background, like at club scenes, he would go, all right, guys, sexy, sexy time, it's sexy the energy. I hope we're talking about the same Michael.

00:37:40
Speaker 10: I think we are definitely.

00:37:42
Speaker 1: I'm in touch with Yeah, I'm still in touch with Michael sheay, I just saw him recently.

00:37:46
Speaker 8: We talked when he was on our show. We talked about.

00:37:49
Speaker 2: We love that guy.

00:37:51
Speaker 5: Love that guy. That's cool.

00:37:53
Speaker 4: There, see there there are serious overlaps between our two shows.

00:37:57
Speaker 5: We have.

00:37:58
Speaker 3: We have one more over lap question writer, did you do the graduate on Broadway?

00:38:04
Speaker 2: After I did the Graduate on Broadway?

00:38:05
Speaker 5: No, you got it? You got it? And I did not. Oh, I was too Kathleen Turner.

00:38:11
Speaker 9: So I went and read with Kathleen and she was like, made me take my boots off.

00:38:14
Speaker 2: And I thought, you did it after me.

00:38:16
Speaker 9: No, I did it. I did a tour. So I was gonna because you replaced Jason. Did you replace him for the summer or.

00:38:23
Speaker 2: Just for like three months?

00:38:24
Speaker 9: And then so they brought me in at that point and had me read with Kathleen, and she was like, you're too to to I was too short, so she made it made like it was like I think.

00:38:34
Speaker 5: I was like fine, But then they offered me the tour, so I did the I.

00:38:39
Speaker 2: Knew, I knew your name was in that.

00:38:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, I did it. Though, that's cool, that's crazy. Well, it's a small world, y'all. We have we both have meet or met in the title there's there's a lot of.

00:38:52
Speaker 1: Well I want everyone to be able to know. I think you can get How We Made Your Mother. You can listen to it anywhere you get your podcasts.

00:38:59
Speaker 8: What else can where can we go?

00:39:01
Speaker 1: I know Craig talked about his book, Let's plug that again.

00:39:04
Speaker 8: Talk to us about your book? What can people to?

00:39:07
Speaker 4: My first novel it's called That's Not How It Happened from HarperCollins. Buy the book or by the audiobook starring Josh Radner and Kobe Smulders and two other money blackers too, But it's it's a four person story for our narrators, for point of views, and it's my favorite thing I've ever written, besides Time Trotter Cell people.

00:39:22
Speaker 3: It's really rich, like genuinely just a fantastic read.

00:39:26
Speaker 5: This is why we do the podcast. Actually we actually.

00:39:29
Speaker 1: Love and Josh, is there anything you want to talk about outside of the podcast?

00:39:35
Speaker 3: I make music that I'm really happy about and proud about. I just finished a new record, but I have a bunch of stuff up on all the streaming platforms just my name, Josh Radner. My friend Jeremiah just remixed a couple of my tracks that are really.

00:39:49
Speaker 7: What type of music.

00:39:51
Speaker 2: How would you describe it, Craig.

00:39:53
Speaker 5: I mean, it's like any folk acoustics. Smart friends are.

00:40:00
Speaker 8: You guys are best friends, but haven't had lunch yet.

00:40:04
Speaker 4: We're gonna have a mash lunch, a mash lunch. I will sing Josh's praises now. His music is so great. He does the it's the theme song for our podcast, among other things, is a great Josh song.

00:40:15
Speaker 5: He's super great. Everyone go check out his music. It's so amazing, awesome.

00:40:18
Speaker 8: That's so great. Well, thank you both so much for being here.

00:40:22
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to see where this journey takes you over the next nine seasons of the show. And yeah, so thank you both for being here.

00:40:31
Speaker 3: This was a really great It was freat to meet you guys.

00:40:37
Speaker 1: Wow, can't believe how much overlap there. I mean, we knew and we knew there was better.

00:40:40
Speaker 9: Lap, you know, we're talking about like there's also something to the romance, like love storyline, like being this Romeo and Juliet and like how I met your mother in the title starts, is like the point of this is like ultimate union and like ultimately a love that makes sense.

00:40:57
Speaker 5: So it's like I feel like the audience that.

00:41:00
Speaker 9: Up with boy Me's World must have just shifted right into How I Met your Mom.

00:41:02
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, when you think about it, there's you could with a few tweaks. This is Corey and Tepanga moving to New York and meeting a whole new group of friends, right and uh, you know, or wherever the show takes place, and meeting a whole group of friends.

00:41:15
Speaker 5: I've never seen a single episode. I want to admit that, but I've.

00:41:17
Speaker 7: Never seen a single episode. But I'd like to watch it.

00:41:19
Speaker 9: I know my mother was obsessed with I knew people that loved it, but I never watched it.

00:41:23
Speaker 7: So good, Yeah, I hear Neil again.

00:41:26
Speaker 6: I hear Neil kind of like Steals the show where he's just he's so hysterical. And I think he won. I think they all won like a whole bunch of awards for the show. I mean, this is for twenty eight Emmys, which is somehow twenty nine more than we ever were nominated.

00:41:42
Speaker 7: So yeah, it's fine, but Yike's crazy.

00:41:45
Speaker 8: Thank you all for joining us for this episode of Pod Meets World.

00:41:48
Speaker 1: As always, you can follow us on Instagram pod Meets World Show. You can send us your emails Pod Meets World Show at gmail dot com, and we've got.

00:41:55
Speaker 7: Merch the How I Met Your Mother theme song.

00:42:00
Speaker 10: I don't know the theme song, so that, yeah, you're just making it up.

00:42:03
Speaker 6: I have I was gonna do, don't.

00:42:06
Speaker 7: That's anybody's guests, but that's Blossom, So that wasn't gonna help at all.

00:42:09
Speaker 10: Yeah.

00:42:11
Speaker 8: Podmeetsworldshow dot com writer send us out.

00:42:14
Speaker 5: We love you all, pod dismissed.

00:42:18
Speaker 9: Pod Meets World is an iHeart podcast producer hosted by Danielle Fischel, Wilfridell and Ryder Strong executive producers, Jensen Karp and Amy Sugarman Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo, producer and editor, Tarasubasch producer, Maddy Moore engineer and Boy Meets World superman Easton Allen. Our theme song is by Kyle Morton of Typhoon. Follow us on Instagram at Podmeets World Show or email us at Podmeets World Show at gmail dot com