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- [00:01]
A
Greg, you know what I like best about our jobs?
- [00:04]
B
Working with me?
- [00:05]
A
No, no, that's like seventh or eighth. I'd say one or two is that. We've talked about this on the podcast. We don't have to wear a suit and tie to work.
- [00:15]
B
Oh, never, never, never do.
- [00:17]
A
Working in tv, working in theater, working in podcasting. I mean, you barely wear pants.
- [00:22]
B
I'm not even sure I'm wearing pants now. And I'm writing books and stuff. I don't have to. I see nobody.
- [00:28]
A
Yeah, you've given up. You've fully given up. It's true. We don't. We. We can wear the comfiest clothes that we can. We can grab. And I know that some of our favorites are Viori.
- [00:41]
B
Here's the thing, because you, you also want to look good. You want to be comfortable, but you want to look good because you can't actually give up. That's the thing.
- [00:47]
A
Don't give up comfortable, but look good. That's the sweet spot.
- [00:50]
B
That's the dream.
- [00:51]
A
Viori is an investment in your happiness. For our listeners, they are offering 20% off your first purchase. Get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet@fiore.com mother that's V U O R I.com mother exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. Not only will you receive 20% off your first purchase, but enjoy free shipping on US orders over $75 and free returns. Go to vuori.com mother and discover the versatility of Vuori. Clothing exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. When thinning starts, it's not just your hair that takes a hit. It can change how you feel day in and day out. And there's so much noise out there, gimmicky products, conflicting advice, expensive clinic visits. It's hard to know what actually works. That's why HIMS makes it simple to take control of hair regrowth with personalized care that fits your life and all online.
- [01:59]
B
And this is one of those things that we. We're old guys, right? We're looking back on our misspent use making a TV show. But if, you know, if we could do it all over again and go back in a time machine. Alec, we know you. You don't have a. I wouldn't say you have a huge amount of hair.
- [02:15]
A
Sure.
- [02:16]
B
You have a good look. You keep it tight, it works for you.
- [02:18]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [02:19]
B
But when you were losing your hair in your 20s, 30s, you didn't have hims. You didn't have something great like hims that could have given you that choice. And now it's available to people who aren't old like us, Correct?
- [02:33]
C
Absolutely. I would say that in my 20s, what did exist was very complicated.
- [02:39]
B
Right.
- [02:40]
C
It felt like this. All these products I had to do. And I was going to say it wasn't available online. I don't think there was online.
- [02:49]
B
It was a lot of, like, it was a lot of, like, tonics that were sold by, like, traveling salesmen who also had a circus.
- [02:55]
C
Yes, yes. It was that Paul McCartney video.
- [02:57]
A
They were always bursting into song.
- [02:59]
C
Right.
- [03:00]
B
Yeah.
- [03:00]
C
Yes. I definitely. If it were as simple as this, I mean, of course I would have done this.
- [03:05]
A
But you've committed. You've been with this Telly Savalas look for a long, long time.
- [03:10]
B
Yeah.
- [03:10]
A
So I don't know. But if you ever decided you wanted to sprout more hair, I think podcast
- [03:15]
C
listeners would be confused if I started all of a sudden to have a full head of hair.
- [03:20]
A
But I'll.
- [03:21]
B
Listeners, though, like listeners, they can hear your hair. I'm confused by this. I would love it.
- [03:27]
A
Just week to week, you just had more and more hair out and we didn't comment on it.
- [03:32]
B
I know. Well, so if you're too young to know who Telly Savalas is with our hip Kojak reference, we just made you have a choice to use Hims that we owe that us old guys didn't have. And that is a cool choice to have.
- [03:47]
A
Hims offers access to a range of prescription hair loss treatments with doctor trusted ingredients that can stop further hair loss and regrow hair in as little as three weeks to six months. Everything's 100% online with personalized treatment plans, flexible subscriptions, and 24.7 provider support, so you can get started without putting your life on hold.
- [04:06]
B
So for simple online access to personalized and affordable care for hair loss, ED, weight loss, and more, visit hims.com your mother that's hims.com your mother for your free online visit hims.com your mother. Featured products include compounded drug products which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness or quality. Prescription required. See website for full details, restrictions and important safety information. Individual results may vary based on studies of topical and oral minoxidil and finasteride.
- [04:39]
C
The following episode of How We Made youe Mother was recorded live on Instagram on January 11, 2026. My name is Alec Lev, and on this week's episode, I talked with our own Craig Thomas about his first novel, that's not how it happened. And we take questions from the fans that were coming to us right there in the moment. Here we go.
- [04:59]
A
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.
- [05:20]
B
Hello, humans. If humans are seeing this, I think
- [05:23]
C
they are seeing this right now. And my phone just told me that this is live. So it is. People are starting to join us. Hi, everyone.
- [05:30]
B
Hello.
- [05:30]
C
Welcome. Welcome to how we made your Mother special Instagram Live edition. You might be watching us live right now. You might be listening to this as a bonus episode in our feed. Either way, welcome to the show and my name is Alec Lev. I'm the producer here. And our very special guest is our very special co host and executive. Co executive producer and the creator also, by the way, way of How I Met yout Mother, Craig Thomas. Welcome.
- [05:57]
B
Welcome to co creator. Co creator.
- [05:59]
C
Creator.
- [06:01]
B
Craig, thank you for. Thanks for everybody, everybody for doing this. Thank you, Alec, for doing this. Thank you for being here to shamelessly promote my novel.
- [06:09]
C
Absolutely.
- [06:10]
B
Yeah, it's.
- [06:11]
C
And we're already getting. We're already getting hellos from Australia. So this is very.
- [06:17]
B
What time is it in Australia? I ask. Australian.
- [06:19]
C
I don't know.
- [06:20]
B
At some point, I'm not smart enough
- [06:21]
C
to know that someone's also pointing out the Golden Globes are on right now, which how much we care.
- [06:26]
B
No one watches that.
- [06:28]
C
Such things. Also. Hello from Dominican Republic. Hi, everyone. And someone wants to know what we think about the end of Stranger Things. All right, let's move on. All right, we're going to talk.
- [06:38]
B
That's really why we're here. We're really mainly here to talk about Stranger Things. So I'm glad we could get right to that.
- [06:43]
C
We are here to talk about this book, Craig's book. That's not how it happened. Just so everyone here knows, we are going to be doing more of these Instagram lives with our fearless leader, Josh Radner. Today. You do just have me and Craig.
- [07:00]
B
The word just there is pretty heartbreaking. We're going to move past it. I mean, it's accurate, but we have to. It was eviscerating to hear it that way.
- [07:07]
C
It was doing a lot of work.
- [07:08]
B
I realize that it wasn't actually. That's what was hard about it.
- [07:13]
C
All right, I'm going to say this. I'm going to embarrass Craig and I'm going to say this right off the top here. And so that everyone knows we're probably going to be here for about, oh, 45 minutes or so. So you've got some time to get your questions in. Absolutely, we will be asking your questions. Oh, and by the way, we're going to be giving away a book. We don't. We don't have no idea how this is going to work yet exactly. But if you ask, throwing a dart
- [07:36]
B
at the computer screen as the comments go by and whatever, wherever it sticks, I think that's the fairest way to do it.
- [07:41]
C
It's going to be something like that. For anyone that asks a question. I don't know if it has to be someone that we choose. I don't know. But our social media producer, Emily, and, And, Or. And. Or Elliot, who works with Craig, is going to choose. Is going to just choose someone. Now, I know I'm getting some worry that you're only seeing half of our faces, so I'm going to. I'm going to. I have very little I can do for that right now.
- [08:09]
B
And the comment is, we want even less. Can you get it down to 25%? There's no Radner. He's very handsome. We just want to say sliver of these other guys.
- [08:18]
C
Yeah. So I'm. I'm gonna work on that soon. Sorry about that.
- [08:22]
B
This is our trial run, right? We haven't really.
- [08:25]
C
A little bit of a trial run. I'm trying to find any. Any button that says don't obviously show just half of our faces. Why on earth would we like that? That's not. Oh, layout. Okay.
- [08:37]
B
Good layout. Okay.
- [08:38]
C
All right. So I think that right now you're seeing Craig, or in a moment, you're just gonna see Craig, which is inconvenient because I'm the one talking.
- [08:47]
B
I see you, though, but that's. I'm. I'm not helpful here. Right. Because I'm seeing you on Riverside and not on the thing. I'm gonna stop talking.
- [08:52]
C
I think this might work. I think what's currently happening might be working. I'm just gonna start reading here because this is an audio format anyway, so. Hi, everyone. Okay. I think basically it's gonna pick up whoever's talking, and if not, someone will tell me. Here we go. All right, everyone, I want you to listen to me, whether you are. You're listening to me live. You are. You're listening to this as a bonus episode. Get this book. If you're listening in any form on any part of this earth, get this book any way that you can. It is a great new story. It is brilliantly told, and it's Fucking hysterical. Like the best of himyim, it bends time, it bends perspectives, it holds out little mini mysteries, but it's ultimately about love and finding meaning and community and a little bit about telling Hollywood to go fuck itself, which is not what him was about, but it's a little bit about what this is about. We're going to talk all about that, but here's what I have to say. We are living in interesting times and it's hard to know what to do to make the world a slightly better place. Slightly less shitty, maybe. And here's what happens when you read this book. You're going to meet a character with down syndrome who's funny and smart with flaws and failures and hopes and dreams like a. You know, like a person, like a human. And you're going to see a person with a disability in a totally new light. And that might make you see people with disabilities off the page in a totally new light. And then you're going to recommend this book to someone else. You're going to give your copy to someone else and maybe they're going to see people with disabilities in a slightly different light. Also, Hollywood doesn't really love stories about people with disabilities or forget about. About just with people with disabilities. So we're going to talk about that. I have some experience with it, so does Craig. Getting this book says yes. You want these stories to be told, so get this book. Get the audiobook read by Josh and Kobe. You will love it, I promise. That's why you should get it. Make the world a slightly better place. Now we're going to talk about it.
- [11:01]
B
That was beautiful. Thank you, my friend. I'm not going to cry, Craig.
- [11:07]
C
We always start off How We Made youe Mother Available everywhere. You get your podcasts where our host and leader Josh Radner asks you to summarize the episode of the week. So let's do that here. What is that's Not How It Happened.
- [11:22]
B
That's not how It Happened is the story of a family told from the perspective, the shifting perspectives of those four family members as they go through the bizarre process of Hollywood deciding to make a movie about their lives. A movie that's supposed to be this feel good film. And the process of making this feel good film based on a memoir the mother has written, threatens to tear the whole family apart in its feel goodness and opens up this can of worms about whose story is it in a family story and especially a family where there's a member with a disability. But it kind of any family who's Right. Who's the narrator? We all think we're the main character in our story. We all think we're future Ted telling the story. We have the authoritative point of view. And this plays with the idea that in the shifting four perspectives, whose version is the truth? And is any version the truth? And how does that get translated to become a movie, much less a story we tell ourselves within a family? So it's really. And it's about disability and it's about marriage and it's about siblinghood, and it's got at least two love stories, kind of three. And yeah, it's. Besides how I'm other, it's my favorite thing I've ever written.
- [12:35]
C
Okay, let's start off with some linguistic advocacy here. The first line of your book is, I am a, quote, special needs parent quote in the book. So you're putting language front and center. We've got disability. We've got disabled, neurotypical, neurodivergent. I work in the deaf community. And the word disability is shunned by some and strongly embraced by others. Do you want to talk a little bit about the words that we're using to start off with?
- [13:05]
B
Yeah. The word, the term special needs is in quotes in that first sentence of the book. Because Paige, the mother whose perspective opens the book and they shift all. Every few pages, you shift perspectives between characters. But Paige starts it off and she's a mom who was raised now a 24 year old with down syndrome. And she doesn't like that term very much. Right. That term has been kind of weaponized, you know, and there's something, there's something condescending about that term. In a way, people take the word special to now mean an insult. There's this strange thing humans do where any term we come up with to describe people who are different, some percentage of humanity will take that term and try to weaponize it, will try to sharpen it and make a blade out of it.
- [13:50]
A
And.
- [13:51]
B
And she basically starts the book by saying, like, this is why we can't have nice things. We try to come up with these terms and people weaponize them. And so what's the answer? Her answer. And an answer that I've loved in my journey through the disability community and talking to so many people who are so much smarter about it than I am, and being educated by older, wiser, tribal elders within that community for the past 18 years, my son's 18 person first language is basically, it seems to be the only thing I've arrived at. You. You show people who the person is. You start with who the person is. And I'd say that's one of the main goals of this book is Emmett. In this book, he's a 24 year old with down syndrome trying to figure out what adult life looks like. And his whole family is trying to figure that out for him. And the world turns out to not have a ton of answers. Not only do we not have a great answer of how to talk about disability, what's the answer for what an adult disabled life looks like? And do we like saying the word disabled as much as I just did in the sentence I just said and when. My goal in this book was to make Emmett really the star of the book. In some ways to say and not to do spoilers. But what happens through the course of the book places Emmett in this person first position of agency and power. And in the end, and I guess that's the bad. I don't know what the terminology will keep shifting, but the notion of putting the human being first and trying to understand the human being and putting the labels off to the side, and we can debate those later, but let's start with the human being. And that's certainly how I see my son. I don't think of my son as he's that guy with Jacobson syndrome, a rare chromosomal deletion. I think of my son as Elliot, who is hilarious and loves Pearl Jam and we play music together all the time. And like, you know, he's just one of the best people I've ever met. And then he also has this thing. And that's. To me, that's the only answer I've arrived at is to look at it that way.
- [15:54]
A
And I wrote you this little ditty to sing to you in New York City. We'll be right, right back, Greg. Josh, you know I have a sweet spot for style. Can I describe it to you, please? Here's what it is. I want to look great.
- [16:16]
B
Yeah.
- [16:17]
A
But I don't want to look like I put any effort into it at all.
- [16:21]
B
Oh, yes.
- [16:21]
A
Do you know what I'm saying?
- [16:23]
B
Yeah. That's the dream.
- [16:24]
A
That's. That's what you want.
- [16:25]
B
That's what you want.
- [16:26]
A
I just want people. Oh, this. I just rolled out a bit. I don't know. It doesn't even. Oh, I just grabbed it off the. You know.
- [16:33]
B
Yeah, I do know. I do know. I never. I almost never look that way because it looks either like I tried zero or I tried really, really way too hard.
- [16:42]
A
I would say comedy writers out of all of showbiz probably need the most fashion help.
- [16:48]
B
Would you say A, how dare you? And B, yes.
- [16:52]
A
And also forget about A, how have you been? How have you been getting help lately?
- [16:56]
B
So here's what's been really, really helpful.
- [16:59]
C
Quince.
- [17:00]
B
Quince has come into our lives because of this podcast and it's a thing of beauty. I we have gotten a couple batches of really, really nice things from Quince. One in the winter and now it's springtime. And what I the problem I tried to solve with the stuff I chose for quints, they let us choose a few items. I just feel like I have nothing that looks what you just described. I have nothing in my spring and summer wardrobe that looks kind of like I didn't try too hard, but it looks nice. It's just like I just have crappy T shirts or like really uncomfortable, like button downs that are for like a fancy event that I don't look that good in this. That's exactly the sweet spot you're talking about, Josh. Very comfortable. Like just like a black polo shirt, like a navy blue button up like staple. Like classic things that go with everything.
- [17:43]
A
They can look a little Go with everything. Swap them out with everything.
- [17:46]
B
Yeah, it goes with everything. And I got like several things like that that I'm just going to be wearing all spring and all summer. So thank you, Quintessential.
- [17:53]
A
Thank you, Quince. Refresh your every day with luxury you'll actually use. Head to quince.com your motherpod for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. We love Canada on this podcast, don't we? We should do that's Q-U-I-N c e.com your motherpod for free shipping and in 365 day returns quince.com your mother pod hey, I'm Anderson Cooper. Grief can feel so lonely, but talking about it and listening to others share their experiences helps. It's probably the only thing that's really helped me on my podcast. All there is. We explore grief and loss in all its complexities. You'll hear deeply moving and honest discussions with people who have faced and are living with life altering losses. Talking grief, building community. That's what the podcast is all about. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts. Craig, I was recently looking at one of my credit card statements. Do you ever do this? Look at your credit card statements?
- [19:03]
B
Yeah, like once every few years.
- [19:05]
A
Yeah, sometimes I'm a little like Lily. I kind of bury my head in the Sand. I'm like, I don't want to see it. I don't want to see it. But today I really. I looked it over, and I saw that there was a charge from a very big bookstore chain that apparently I've been a member of for years with some sort of, like, yearly subscription, maybe even monthly. I hope it's a. But I was just like, why? I haven't set foot in one of these stores in years. So I've got this charge that I. And I Then I started. My mind started spinning. I was like, how many of these do I have?
- [19:39]
B
Right? What is the grand total that you've been paying since, like, happy Y2K or whatever? Yeah, yeah. It's ridiculous.
- [19:46]
A
I don't want to crunch those numbers because now that I have a kid, I'm starting to think about college.
- [19:52]
B
Yeah, I know, I know. Like, that would have been really useful. Can I make a suggestion?
- [19:56]
A
Yes, please.
- [19:57]
B
Since we're just two dudes here chatting on microphones, I'm going to just spontaneously suggest something. Rocket Money. Josh.
- [20:03]
C
Wait, what?
- [20:03]
B
Rocket Money, I say. You heard me. You heard me.
- [20:07]
A
Tell me. Tell me more about it.
- [20:08]
B
I will. I will. So, Rocket Money. This app automatically categorizes transactions, tracks subscriptions, and even lets you cancel unwanted ones. Case in point, in just a few taps, you can end up cutting all kinds of subscriptions. Just like what you just described. Things you did not. You don't even remember, to this day, signing up for.
- [20:28]
A
I don't remember signing up for this.
- [20:29]
B
Save so much money. I don't even want to guess how much money you wasted because you don't even know what year that started in. And it just makes you feel better. You're not wasting money and you're just, like, less stressed out about money. And that Rocket Money can do all of that for you.
- [20:42]
A
Look, I just need to free up more space in my psyche to do this podcast. I can't be worried about hemorrhaging money on subscriptions that I did in 2002. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join@RocketMoney.com Mother that's RocketMoney.com Mother RocketMoney.com Mother. And now back to the show.
- [21:23]
C
Well, you have transitioned us right into our our next question, and people are starting to ask Lily Gaggin, Underscore also asks, did you include real life scenarios you've experienced in the book and you know, is there any truth to this story? So, so let's go back to the beginning him style. Let's flashback here. We are recording this in January. We on our podcast have just released the 11th episode of season two. Okay, so the air date of that was December 11th, 2006. And according to my calculation, your wife Rebecca was pregnant at that time.
- [22:07]
B
That's correct.
- [22:08]
C
So tell us then what happened in April of 2007 and how it affected you and for our himym loving audience, how it affected or didn't affect how I met your mother. And then of course, how it led to this book.
- [22:23]
B
I want to pause for one second. That's a great question. But I also want to say that Elliot, my son, who is one of the inspirations for Emmet in the book, he's watching and chiming in with questions and comments and he just wrote, am I the second star of the book? He wants to be co star along with Emmett. Fictional Emmett and real life Elliot are the two stars of this book. And I'm going to go ahead and say that yes, Elliot, you are definitely one of the stars of this book in so many different ways. But to flashback hymn style, back to 2007, as you just pointed out, yeah, it was a game changer on every level. It was a game changer for my whole life. It was a game changer for Helen at your mother. We had no idea that we were about to have a child with a disability. Nothing showed up on testing that we had done. He had this very rare chromosomal deletion that led to some heart issues. And the heart issues once he was born, that's how we found out there was a genetic syndrome because he was in immediate distress because of these heart issues that were also too small to see at the time in 2007, on the types of scans that were available then because they involved these teeny tiny little veins being not wired the right way in his heart and he needed open heart surgery at two weeks old. He was born much smaller than anyone had thought. So many things we didn't know and were just total surprises. And he weighed about 3, 3 pounds, 11 ounces and needed open heart surgery to fix veins the size of dental floss. And it was, as you can imagine, 50, 50 odds, you know, it could have gone either way. And we followed his lead and he proved that he wanted to be here and has done so every day since, including to today as he's sitting there chiming in saying he's the star of the book. Which he is. And. Yeah, but what did it do to my life at that time? What did it do to How I Met yout Mother? It was between year two and three of How I Met yout Mother. It was during the hiatus between those two seasons. And very. The way that young parents arrogantly think we're just gonna bang out a perfectly fine kid and then I'll just be right back to work. It's perfect. It's right in the middle of the Hyatt. It's perfectly scheduled right back in. When we round up the writer's room in the late spring, you know, after Elliot was born, April 30th and maybe in late May or whatever it was gonna be. We're gonna round it back up and get. And it would all be easy and all go according to plan. And it was, of course, not that. And it turned out to be very humbling right off the bat having. Because we were in the nicu, the neonatal intensive care unit, for about six weeks. And then we got ellio and spent every second of being home terrified too. We were so happy to get out of the nicu than constantly like, oh, but there's no team of nurses and equipment to make sure he's okay here at our home. And you almost want to go back to the nicu, even though as badly as you wanted to get out of there. But we began this hugely steep learning curve, my wife Rebecca, and I. Rebecca was amazing, an amazing mom at figuring everything out that needed to be figured out. And she didn't have what I had, which was the ability after a few weeks to head into the How I Met yout Mother writer's room. And that was such an escape for me. And I use that word, escape, because that. That does factor into the book a little bit. Right?
- [25:36]
C
The.
- [25:36]
B
The idea of which parent really stays the most in the discomfort of solving all of these problems, confronting all of these huge world, you know, world shaking twists and turns of being the parent of a medically complicated kid who also has a rare syndrome and is going to have learning disabilities. And I got to go into a writer's room and make dick jokes for a significant portion of the early months of Elliot's life. And got to go in and spend time with Ted and Robin and Marshall and Lily and that world. And I would say, for me, it was so healing to have that. That's my first answer to your question. Alec is like. It was so. I was very lucky to have another world to spend time in besides the real world of our lives. That was really hard. And then when I would go back to that world, Rebecca, my wife, of course, had been in that world all day long, and it was really hard. And that dynamic stayed with me. And that is something I write about in the book. The idea of it's so hard for couples in this position because one person has to sacrifice more and spend more time in the really hard part, and the other one has to go make money to pay for everything that's going on at home and medically and everything for the whole future. But that person, even though they're under enormous pressure to provide financially, they still get to go do something else with part of the day. And I'd say that was a really. That's what comes back to me when you say, what did spring of 2007 feel like? That's where that was.
- [27:09]
C
Yeah. And you. You did wind up having,
- [27:15]
B
I guess,
- [27:15]
C
spoilers at this point for Marcia and
- [27:17]
B
Lily had a baby.
- [27:19]
C
Sorry, everyone. Marshall wound up having a baby, and you had a choice to make. I would imagine you had a choice to make of how much to reflect your life on this screen. We'll talk about potential future screens, but on. On this screen. And what were. What went through your head?
- [27:38]
B
Yeah. When we got up to that point in the series, I mean, it was a few years later. Right. It was like, I'm forgetting. I'm trying to remember what season it was, but, you know, at this point, my son would have been four or five or whatever it was. And I remember having this real soul search of these characters that are ostensibly based on my wife and I, Marshall and Lily. Do we write. Do we write it into the show? Do we write them having a kid who is in some way complicated, medically, developmentally, whatever it was going to be? Can I do that? Does the audience want to see that? Will the network allow us to do that? Can we even consider doing that? That's not what the show is really about, but can we make it be in part about that? And I remember having some real soul searching about that and continue to feel mixed about it to this day, that in the end I decided no. I think we might have floated it to the studio and network. And I don't remember them being super crazy about the idea. Carter Bayes was wonderfully supportive and was like, look, we can figure out a way to talk about this on the show. He never said no. Really, in the end, I can't blame anybody but myself. I think that I a little bit chickened out in terms of really pushing the content There it was still fresh enough and new enough. The show wasn't really about that. But what was weird is that we were writing these characters that I felt the closest to. Marshall and Lily were the most like myself and my wife. And when they had a healthy baby on the show, which again we wrote, I felt somewhat estranged from them. The same way that I felt estranged from you, Alec, from my other friends. That at the same time as me and your son was born days apart from mine. We're gonna get very real here. I'm dragging you into the realness. I'm not gonna be the only one in the fucking hot seat here, bro.
- [29:25]
C
No, no, don't worry. It's in my list of questions. We'll get there.
- [29:31]
B
And I'm not at all singling. Like, everyone started to have kids. We were having kids on the early side and everyone's kid seemed so shiny and perfect and easy and everything was going according to plan. And you feel, and I hope there are other parents like, like myself watching. It feels so lonely at first and especially if there's anybody younger than me with young kids still, I hope you know, I see you, it's so lonesome. And then when everyone around you seems to not be having your incredibly lonely, challenging experience, it just compounds that loneliness. And suddenly I felt that way a little bit towards Marshall and Lily. Like, ah, look, they went and had a perfectly healthy, easy kid too. But they're fictional. I'm one of the people writing that. It was just really bizarre. You did that? I did that, right. Maybe we could have done something different. But that's what I did. And I'm like, fuck them with their healthy, perfect kid. But I got over that and I just embraced writing Marshall and Lilly, our fictional characters. They had to be fictional characters. It was nice to have a distance from them at times. And I think probably my deeper need and why I was the one that didn't fully push. I didn't like die on this hill to make them have a complicated kid so I could write about that. Probably in part because I wanted to have somewhere else to go to. I wanted to have my home life, be that problem solving and then go to work and have something else. But it always stuck with me that I always wanted to write something about this huge, life changing part of my life. And I tried for years to figure that out. And I'd say this book is the culmination. I finally got there with this book.
- [31:09]
C
So let's talk a little bit about the interim between How I Met yout Mother and writing this book, which, you know, Hollywood was, was, was very good to you for, for, for quite a while. And you, you were very good to it. And then I know you had some less great experiences confronting executives, confronting people who maybe didn't. Weren't as into the idea of this sort of representation on screen, this sort of storytelling on screen. I imagine some of that anger that, that must have made you feel has made it into this book. Can you talk. I don't know what sort of detail you want to go into with that, but can you talk a little bit about trying to make other works of art? That did very much, yeah, I'll tell
- [31:58]
B
a little anecdote just that captures how it felt. And I wrote about this. I wrote this little. This personal essay in the Boston Globe called Hollywood and the R Word. If anyone wants to look that up. I was really proud of it. It was one of the steps towards me writing this novel, was writing that piece. And in it I briefly touched upon this one story, which was a couple years after Helmet yout Mother ended, Carter and I signed a deal to develop TV shows for another place. And I will throw no one under the bus and no one's evil in this story. And I will not name names. It's not that, that's not what I'm doing here. But we signed this deal and I thought the folks we were signing the deal with knew about Elliot, knew about my son, and knew about the journey I'd been through. We'd thrown these big fundraiser parties on the How I Met yout Mother soundstage, and we'd had like, we'd done events. And I came into this deal at this new place thinking this is when I'll write something about my version of parenthood, being the parent of a child with a disability. I will find a way under this new deal where one of the shows or two of the shows, you know, maybe this will be an element in a bunch of things we pitch. And it's going to be a three year deal. I'll have the opportunity. And in the opening meeting of the deal, some of the executives in the room started telling a story, the gist of which was mocking some adults with disabilities that would eat lunch at a park near where they all worked every day. And they would all sometimes go eat lunch in the park. And they were joking about how they were uncomfortable being near the table full of adults who lived in a group home nearby in the area who would go eat lunch there. And just like the gist of the story was them joking about like, aren't we terrible for feeling upset? So they, they kind of were saying, it sucks that I'm. We're saying this and, and. But it was still had this feeling of like, we're still kind of making the joke about those. Those folks are like, anyway, we don't really go over there so much anymore to that park and have lunch there. And it was a bummer. And I sat there frozen in silence, and I didn't say anything. This was the first meeting on the first day of a three year deal
- [34:11]
C
which had been announced very loudly in many Hollywood papers.
- [34:14]
B
A three year deal in which I thought we would write about this, we would tell stories about this with our new partners. And now here's the part that redeems these folks. And again, no one was evil. This is an example of no one knows how to talk about this shit. People are uncomfortable with disability because we have all grown up in a society where we don't know how to talk about disability. And I don't blame them for it. I was the same way before I had my son, right? I'm no better or different. And I, I like, walked out of that meeting absolutely numb. Carter looks over at me, he's like, are you about to vomit? You know, like, what's going on? He knew, he knew how bad it was, and he was wondering if I would say something. And I didn't. And then we're like driving away and I go, I have to say something. And we get back to our office, wherever we were, and I call them up and I say, hey, listen, I went completely catatonically into a fugue state during that meeting. I got these folks, these executives on. I said, here's what that was for me. And I told them, and they felt terrible about it. They gave some context about why they were feeling some of their discomfort. That had to do with some of their own personal lives too. And as, as always happens when you give people a chance, they dimensionalize themselves in telling that story. And I, and we stayed in that deal and we worked with those people and we had a good time. It was this. This is not their evil. We quit that day. But I was so happy that I had said that. I actually was so ashamed in the moment that I didn't say something, but then happy that I finally did. This is all to say, that's what I felt up against in trying to pitch stories about this, even in, you know, the 2000 teens where this story takes place. And long story short, we tried. And this is not me blaming the people we were allied with in trying to pitch these shows, no one bought them. We pitched a few different ideas. We wrote a feature film. Nothing ever that set within this world of disability. And we tried a few different ways at it. Comedy, a musical. We tried a whole bunch. Nothing ever found its way through. And I think that's not an uncommon story where studios will want the nobility of giving it the old college tribe. And in the end, when it comes to putting millions of dollars into a TV show that might go for years, it's often not what gets chosen to spend those millions of dollars on. And that now I'll race to the end of the story, which is. That's why I wrote it as a book. I needed to tell a story about this as a writer. And the book includes some of what I just talked about. But the book is not just about Hollywood. The book is about a family.
- [36:54]
A
And this old man, he must admit, fell in love with you. New York City.
- [37:03]
B
And now commercials.
- [37:08]
A
Craig, I've been struggling and I gotta talk to you about it.
- [37:11]
B
Please. I'm here.
- [37:12]
A
Yeah, I've just been. I've been carrying around these bulky drinks.
- [37:15]
B
Yeah.
- [37:15]
A
And I've been cleaning melted candy out of my pockets for far too long. But I have a solution.
- [37:21]
B
What's the solution? I need to know.
- [37:24]
A
I've discovered Fruity Rainbow five Hour Energy Shots.
- [37:27]
B
Oh, my God. By the way, I did notice the melted candy in your pockets. I didn't say anything, but I'm glad you finally kind of owned it. Yeah. Well, check this out. You chose correctly because these little bottles are wild. Fruity Rainbow five Hour Energy Shots. Treat your taste buds to an explosion of fruity flavor with that signature tasty caffeine kick. If you're a fan of sweet fruity candy, who isn't? But without the sugar crash. Because, yep, these puppies have zero sugar. You gotta try this.
- [37:54]
A
Five Hour Energy is giving caffeine a serious flavor upgrade. Five Hour Energy shots now come in 17 flavors, so there's something for every mood. But this Fruity rainbow one is definitely having a moment.
- [38:08]
B
It is. Plus, it's big flavor in a tiny bottle. Just 2 ounces. Super portable, easy to toss in your bag or pocket. No sticky wrappers, no bulky drinks. Just grab and go.
- [38:18]
A
Get candy Flavored chaos with fruity rainbow five hour energy shots. Available online at 5hourenergy.com or Amazon. Hey, before we jump back into the show, let's take a quick break. But not just any break. This is a ref break with Snapple. We all know about Snapple's iconic real facts. So let's take a minute to go over some of my faves.
- [38:44]
B
Snapple Real Fact 1978 More than 40 buildings in New York have their own zip codes.
- [38:50]
A
Snapple Real Fact 1667 Lovebirds are actual birds.
- [38:55]
B
Snapple Real Fact 2002 On May 1, 1931, the Empire State Building officially opened in New York City.
- [39:03]
A
Snapple RealFact 253 the first TV remote control introduced in 1950 was called Lazy Bones.
- [39:11]
B
So grab a Snapple, take a second and enjoy the moment because let's be honest, this might be the most refreshing part of your day. Snapple, make your break more interesting. All right. Now let's get back to the show. End of commercials, back to shell.
- [39:34]
C
We do have fresh hot off the presses. Elliot Thomas tells us with the Golden Globe Award for best novel goes to Craig Thomas.
- [39:46]
B
That's good. I never won shit on How I Met yout Mother. I'm already winning Golden Globes for my book. I didn't know they. I was unaware they added a book category. Thanks, Alice, for telling me that.
- [39:57]
C
Let's stick with the personal for one more second. Then we'll broaden out to how you wrote this book and a bunch of these great questions that people are ask. So, yes, I was going to say it, too, but I'll say more. Your son and mine were born, I think, one day apart.
- [40:11]
B
I think it was one day apart,
- [40:12]
C
if my math is right, and people who know about us a little bit. I went to high school with your wife. I knew her before you did. You and I became friends very close to day one of Wesleyan University, where your characters go to school. Went to school. And we were all of a sudden about to share this. And I'm bringing this up because not just so that everyone could hear our personal story, you and me, but
- [40:41]
B
people
- [40:42]
C
clearly have to go through this both on your side and on my side of what was this ledger. And we were going to share everything, right? Our wives, our friends, they were going to share that and we were going to share this. And it was like drop of a hat. Nope, we're not going to share anything.
- [41:00]
B
It made it sound briefly like we were sharing wives. That was not exactly what's going to happen, but let's. We'll move on back to the deep part.
- [41:06]
C
We'll do some editing on that.
- [41:09]
B
It's live, but. Okay, keep going.
- [41:10]
C
Now, on the podcast, you guys, you've been making some amends for some of the, you know, some of the lines that don't age very well.
- [41:17]
B
Yeah.
- [41:17]
C
And, you know, that's very important. And we want to really thank, by the way, everyone who has. Who has commented on how much you've appreciated that too, because it's very important. You know, on page 67, Paige, the mother here says there's a phrase parents of healthy, neurotypical kids like to say to special needs parents, quote, unquote, after we've told them about something difficult with our child. They think this makes us feel better, less alone. And that phrase is, hey, that's just how it is with every kid. Right. Meaning we all worry. So we're all the same. I'm sorry, but no, it's not the same. Your kid is very, very different from mine. And we need to be able to talk about that. Let me just say to you here publicly, and then I will bring it home. I hope I never said anything quite like that, but there is a distinct non0 chance that I did. And if I did, I want to apologize here. We didn't wind up sharing our early fatherhoods together, and I'm sad about that. And the reason I say that, that's on me is because, like you're saying, I don't blame myself for not knowing what to say. I mean, I think I sort of pretended I didn't have a son for a long time around you sort of.
- [42:36]
B
Yeah.
- [42:36]
C
You know.
- [42:37]
B
Yeah. You're not the only one.
- [42:38]
A
Right.
- [42:39]
C
And I think that where the blame. Cause that's normal. The blame comes from. I wish I had done a Lillian Marshall esque timeout and go, okay, Craig, I know we got some shit going on here. Let's you and I take a pause for a second, walk over here and talk about how we can talk about this. Talk about how we could live together like this, because we kind of wound up not living together for quite a long time. And I should have asked more. And I'm very grateful that we're now making this podcast and we're very much in each other's lives right now, but. So I apologize for that.
- [43:16]
B
Oh, no, but it's. I appreciate that it's both ways, too, because I don't. I didn't know how to talk about it either. I didn't know how to. I don't know how important it would be to get over the feeling of being disincluded because we had this different child and how it would have been worth making that leap back to my friends who were having kids and that feeling of, well, it's too hard to see the Other version that's going so much easier than we're having it. So I'm gonna not see that. And being on alert for anything that's gonna be said or done that's not gonna be exactly right. So that I can go, ah, see, they don't get it. You know, And I'm not pointing, I'm saying. I'm not saying just you, but everybody. And if I could go back now, it'll be real himyim speaky. And if I could like, flashback and revisit my past self, I would say stop that. I would say find a way to stay connected to your friends even as they have kids who feel different from your kid. And there's some jealousy and there's some. Look how easy they have it sitting in that world of I'm gonna put a distance here because I am uncomfortable with this or they don't get it. It's just. It is a recipe to live in a stupid pain cave that you don't have to live in. And this is the problem. It's the same thing as I said about those executive folks. Like, nobody, none of us grow up knowing how to talk about this stuff. And it seems other. It seems like something that will happen to someone else. Disability is something that will happen to someone else. Then it comes into your life and you realize you've been ill equipped to even know how to talk about it or approach it. And most people, you know, it's the same thing. You don't. You're not conversant in this language. And that's the problem when we don't include people with disabilities in society and tell stories about them and connect to them and have them be visible and really part of society and have roles and have a place and inclusion. And inclusion. Inclusion. It's a good word, that word. It's not a bad word. Don't trust any fucking person that says different. Yeah, and that is how we all learn how to talk about it. But we came of age, Alec, at a time where we were not getting that. We were growing up in the 1980s and there we were, you know, as new parents and we didn't have the language. And I think it's the same thing as that story about the executive folks. Like, we just. None of. There's a discomfort. There's a discomfort and there's a. We don't know what to say, so we're not going to say anything. Or you try to say something and it's kind of wrong. And then did I offend that person? Blah, blah, blah. And then you just don't talk about it. Then a year goes by and you don't talk about it, or two years or three years. And, yeah, I regret that too. I feel like that that happened with me and a bunch of people and yeah, if I could go back, I would change that and I would wish. I'm happy to be talking about this because I hope people might hear it and question whether they're doing that, if they're parents of young kids with new diagnoses, try to stay connected. And also, it's really hard. It's really hard to see other people seeming to breeze through parenthood. And then they're still complaining about it. And you're going, what the fuck are you complaining about? You have it so easy. Oh, you didn't sleep? Wow. My son had his chest cut open. Fuck off. And it's. And in the end, no one wins when you do that. But of course you do that. And you. You find yourself watching years go by and you're doing that, and then, thank God, one day you get fucking bored of being angry and judgy and you just go, I'm just lonely now. I just want to connect with my friends. And if anybody's listening and you can speed through that process faster than. Than I did, I would recommend that.
- [47:01]
C
Well, I think that's something that I know that you're. I want to talk about how much do you think your book has already started to do this, or. I know your hope for it to do this, but the idea of creating community is something that I think you and Carter definitely didn't set out to do with How I Met yout Mother. I mean, you're just gonna write your TV show. And what we've seen, you saw it all these decades, but we're really seeing with this podcast is you created a global community, right, with How I Met yout Mother. And we are hoping to hear from them and encourage that. And I think that this too. I know you were on Jamie Lee Siegler and Christina Applegate's podcast also, and they were talking about just the loneliness of going through so much of going through when you get some sort of diagnosis and you start. Your life starts to change, or your child does. And this idea that you are again now creating, hopefully, or becoming part of, not create necessarily, but becoming a voice in this community, I think is really helpful. I'll tell you right now. We have Mbeth G78 says thank you, Craig. I felt seen Katie KNC says, thank you, Emily.
- [48:14]
B
Emily. And I are buddies online. Thank you, Emily. I really appreciate it. Emily made a beautiful video about reading my book. And I know Emily, it's just a great disability advocate herself. She has disability. I know. She has a completely different type of deletion, I believe, than Elliot. I hope I'm getting that right, Emily. But you're so eloquent about it. And you, you, I was gonna say you inspire me, but we've actually made jokes about how like, don't force me to be inspiring, which is in my book. And she talks about that and like, anyway, it's just very meaningful. So thank you, Emily.
- [48:42]
C
That's great. Now someone, and I apologize, here it says Katie KNC and then next to it it says ichellemcneil009. I'm not convert. I'm 50, so I don't understand Instagram enough to know which is the name of the person who has said this. But they said I have mosaic down syndrome, meaning one of my cells has the extra chromosome. And I found it extremely accurate and amazingly representative.
- [49:06]
B
Oh, that's so nice to hear. That is so nice to hear and such a gift. The disability community has been so amazing in receiving this book. You know, it's written with. I wrote it with love for my son, but I don't have a disability. I'm a parent and I'm writing in these four characters, one of whom has a disability. A lot of it's my son. A lot of it's the 18 years I spent with my meeting all these amazing families, all these amazing kids, and all these amazing now young adults with disabilities. But of course I was nervous putting it out in the world. I wanted to get it right. I wanted people to feel like it was authentic and that it gave voice, especially to the character who has down syndrome in the right way. So that that means a lot. Thank you for sharing that comment.
- [49:44]
C
And by the way, I've now figured things out. That was from Katie KNC, because I now see what Michelle said. MichelleMcNeelo09 asks, have you received any feedback from people with down syndrome and or their families? How do you feel about your portrayal of how they feel about your portrayal of Emmett? Have you received any criticism or do people feel it was accurate?
- [50:05]
B
I have been overwhelmed by how joyful and warm the reception has been to the character of Emmett specifically. It's been beyond my wildest dreams. It's just been so warmly received and people take time to reach out and from all over the world and write to me in various ways to tell me that and it does feel like Emmett is really the heart and soul and the star of this book. And I wanted to get the down syndrome part as right as I could. My son doesn't have down syndrome. My son has something different. There are a lot of overlaps to down syndrome with Jacobson syndrome, which my son has, but it is also different. And I had a good friend, one of the founders of the inclusion school my son went to from kindergarten to age 18. That school was founded by three mothers who had kids with down syndrome and did not see a just right school that would really serve their kids atypical learning style. All of their strengths being grown and served and supported, and all of their challenges being met in the right way. And like Paige in this book, this was part of the inspiration for Paige. These three moms 15, 20 years ago said, there's no great school here in New York City that's right for our kids. Fuck it. We're gonna make our own. And that's the ideal school of Manhattan. And one of those mothers, Audra, she is the parent of this amazingly charismatic, wonderful drummer named Max. Max is a few years older than Elliot. So we were looking up to Max as Elliot grew up and went through the ideal school. And I remember watching Max play drums and just kick ass at school events in this school. And I'm a drummer, and I thought, I want to teach my son drums, but will it be possible? My son has fine motor delays. He has gross motor delays. There's all these reasons why it shouldn't have worked. But here was Max, who has down syndrome, just killing it on the drums. And I said, we have a new role model. It's Max, and we're gonna get there. And then during the pandemic, I really, like, locked down, as it were, and taught my son the drums. And it turned out he's great at it. Music is so magical. I don't know that it can be studied. I don't know if it can be decoded. Why can my son. And I hope you're hearing this, Elliot, play note perfect to Stairway to Heaven. But buttoning a button is kind of impossible. And you go, john Bo. You can do John Bonham. But, you know, writing your handwriting's hard. He's more of a typist than a handwriter. And it's just atypical learner. Atypical learner. That's another pretty accurate term, at least for Eliot. And it's just been wonderful. So Audra, the mother of Max, she was one of my first readers of the manuscript when it was still just a manuscript, it was unsold, and she was wonderful to take the time to read through it. And as the mother of a kid with down syndrome and a kid who I really knew pretty well, Max, she gave me some great feedback to make sure it was specific and right to down syndrome. But she also knows Elliot and she knows that there's so many similarities between Elliot and Max. And she was a good cheerleader of like, you're getting it right. Don't doubt yourself too much. But maybe I would tweak these things. And she gave me some really good specific details that maybe made it into the book. So I'm very grateful for that.
- [53:14]
C
At Tamara Beaver says, this book was so good. We have a lot of people writing in who have read the book. And thank you to all of you and all the amazing things that you're saying.
- [53:21]
B
Thank you.
- [53:22]
C
This book was so good. Hilarious. Real down to earth. I love the multiple perspectives and as a speech language pathologist, love the disability representation.
- [53:31]
B
Oh, that's great. My son. My son has had many wonderful speech therapists and has. I have nothing but huge respect. That's the thing on this journey. You meet the most amazing people. Occupational therapists, physical therapists, speech and language. You meet these people who have devoted their lives to helping your kid and using creativity and patience and skill and just talent to help your child. And it really is. It's people you never would have met. And there's so many hidden gifts on this journey. But yeah, sorry, ask the question. But so much respect for. For you for doing that. Thank you on behalf of.
- [54:08]
C
My father studied. I think he actually had. Might have had a degree in speech in language. I'm not even saying the right words. Something with speech, something with language therapy. I don't have it right. And then he became an accountant. So let's. So I also want people to be very crystal clear that this book is fucking hysterical. And that as Himian fans, which I assume everyone listening to this probably is, the similarities are there in your, I don't know, lack of attention span. Perhaps I could say it that way that you don't. Are not attracted to as a writer. It would seem the straight and narrow narratives, beginning, middle and end.
- [54:52]
B
Yeah.
- [54:53]
C
So let's.
- [54:53]
B
Jumps around a lot.
- [54:55]
C
It does. Let's connect the book in terms of style and substance a little bit to the show now on the podcast. I just. I was just editing episode 14, coming out in a couple weeks, and it said, he said, Josh said, I like when the narrator comes in at the end when, when, when Bob Saget comes in, old, old Ted comes in at the end and says. And that's how. Right. Some, some sort of, some sort of lesson. And Josh said, because this isn't just how I met your mother. And you said, right. It's how a lot of shit happened. And the name of your book is that's not how it Happened. So you're, you're, you're. You definitely have an interest, obviously.
- [55:31]
B
Yeah, I really like the word how. Apparently that's what we've learned.
- [55:35]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's clearly a connection in your brain with these projects. Now you. But you and I grew up watching very like down the line storytelling. Right. Like mash, Cheers. Sort of that simple thing. Then, you know, Seinfeld started to get a little crazy. Larry Sanders and then Quentin Tarantino sort of blew all our minds. Right. I was actually thinking Craig also that J.D. salinger, which, who we love that in the later books after A Catcher, when he's sort of piecing together the Glass family deep cut for everyone to go listen to these. It's also, it's all these little mini mysteries and you're going back and forward in time. So I know that all inspired you. This book is not a straight narrative, start to finish. Can you inspire our listeners a little bit into the other reason why they're going to want to read this book is structurally, it's fucking awesome and not unhimyam. Like.
- [56:26]
B
Yeah. And I feel like there's a lot of overlaps to him. And to talk about the comedy piece. And I'll get back to that. The structural piece. Books about disability. And I talk about this in my book about disability. I talk about books about disability. They're often just inspiring. They're supposed to be inspiring and feel good. And then there's this other genre about disability where it's supposed to be very dark and we show how hard it is. And I think what I was going for in my book is I wanted it to be funny. There just aren't that many books that are funny that are about this topic. And I thought, I don't want to do inspiration porn and I don't want to do torture porn. I want it to be. These are human beings and life is funny. And believe me, the disability community and the ones, the people who love them and their parents, we need to laugh. We have to laugh all the time. All the time. You have to find a way to laugh. And that was my absolute top goal in this book, was for it to be funny. Second most was, what's a fun structure to tell a story? How can it. How can I make sure I'm jumping around and kind of, how can a book have the editing style of How I Met yout Mother? Which. Right, Just boredom. Not allowed. We are allergic to boredom. We must never get bored. And it was interesting writing it because I thought I'm going to write it in such a way that if I start to get bored, I can know that I've gone past the end point of that section. And I have to challenge myself. No, this little section. And the book is really written largely in little four or five, six, maybe eight, 10 page sections, switching points of view. I really challenge myself. Like, if I'm getting bored, the reader's getting bored. We have to end this here. And I really wanted to end as many sections as I could, even within chapters on cliffhangers, because that's the how of it. How means mystery. The word how to me equals mystery. How did this happen? How do we solve a mystery? All the best. How much Mother episodes are mini mysteries within the larger mystery. And this book has this larger mystery of what's going to happen to this family? How is this movie going to come together? Is this movie being made of the family going to destroy the family? How are all of these characters going to do on this cliff they're standing on? I use this metaphor that so many parents of kids with disabilities use of the cliff. When you get to around age 22, all of the education and supports and services that your child has had since literally one year old end. And that moment is called the cliff within the disability community. The cliff you fall off of and we all spend. It's the thing that keeps parents like me up at night. And we don't have enough good answers as a society. We do not America. We don't have enough good answers to this. And this is a family. Paige is a mom who creates an answer for Emmett by creating this business. That's a cafe that he can work at with all employees that have different types of disabilities. This is based on another amazing human I met in this amazing journey I've been on for 18 years. A woman up in the Berkshires and her husband that they founded. I'll give them a shout out. Extra special teas. It's a teahouse. There's two of them in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. And it's amazing. And basically that's cafe everyone in my book. I basically met them, interviewed them. I said, I want to take this. I want to take what you've done and use it in my book. And they were just so welcoming to me, and they gave me. They just. They. They shared their life with me, and that's what made it into the book. And yeah, I mean, it's. It. It's basically, I wanted to tell a story where I could be spinning that many plates. Even as I'm answering this question, there's so many plates spinning. I wanted to be able to, like, How I Met yout Mother, be approaching story from a lot of angles at once. And if any plate stopped spinning, you had the next one to spin after that. And it was really fun to write with these four perspectives. And I didn't get bored. It was wonderful. It was wonderful. It reminded me of writing How Much Mother? But I will say this because it is structurally complicated. I needed to put it up on a dry erase board, just like in the writer's room. Of How Much Mother? Quite a few times, whenever I got stuck, I said, we're going back to old school. How Much Mother Rules. Time to get the dry erase markers. Every character's story had a color. Purple is Emmett. Green is Paige. I'm going to do it. Just like we broke stories in the writer's room on the dry erase board. And whenever I got stuck, that's what I did.
- [60:47]
C
I know you pretty well and have known you for a long time. And I was. I was grateful to learn more stuff about you and that I also had to try to pause and go, hold on a second. I know he's also a writer and not a biography.
- [61:05]
B
There's a lot of fiction in here. This is not an autobiography.
- [61:07]
C
Right. I tried to sort of. And then there were times where I could. You know, I could. I could hear Rebecca's voice. Not. You know, I could tell Rebecca's voice was there or parts of her story. Was there anything where you said, fuck, maybe I just shouldn't reveal this? And you. I'm not gonna. Well, I guess my question could be. And didn't put it in the book, but then you wouldn't tell us about it. But was there anything that was like,
- [61:31]
B
none of the murders are in there.
- [61:33]
C
Okay. Not one. Not one. That's why it's so short. Were there what was on the bubble but that made it in anyway?
- [61:43]
B
Many things, I guess. But so much of it is fictional. The character is not my wife. There are aspects of my wife in there, but there are aspects of other people I've met along the. Some of whom I've even mentioned in this conversation. And Some of it's just fiction. So I felt pretty protected by the many different ingredients in all of these characters. Here was the thing that made me feel the best, the character. Whenever I would feel like, ah, is this too personal? Am I stealing this from life too much? What saved me is the character who's the closest to me in the story is by far the shittiest. Rob.
- [62:16]
C
Agree, strong agree.
- [62:17]
B
By the way, all the worst things in this book are done by the guy closest to me. So it was like I'm throwing myself the most under the bus. And again, Rob is not me. I didn't do the things that robbed in this book exactly, but some of the elements of wondering what was it like for my wife to have to be home while I got ogg to go off into this fantasy land and make how I met your mother and these dynamics that form. Yeah, I wanted to investigate that and really be honest and really hold those parts of myself to account. And the narcissism of a middle aged guy who is trying to in his 50s. There's that ego death of maybe your career has cooled. Who are you without career definition? I think that's another thing we don't know how to talk about. We don't know how to talk about disability and we don't know how to talk about who are we besides success, besides achievement, especially men. Who are we? Who are we underneath the things we're chasing? And yeah, I always felt like when in doubt, make sure to come the hardest at the character closest to me. And when in doubt, the characters who bear some resemblance to the members of my family make them the heroes. I'm not doing that just not to get yelled at. I'm doing that because it's the most interesting to me. It's the most interesting to me. And there's a wonderful exercise in saying what's wonderful about these people that I love. How do I show them have flaws, but how do I show that the wonderfulness transcends and makes it through in the end and shines through the brightest in the end. And even for Rob in the end, who experiences redemption at the end of this book and even though he has in some ways the hardest time evolving of these four people. And that's the big twist of the book. We talk about the cliff when we talk about young adults with a disability, but every character in this book is on a cliff. All of the characters are standing on some type of life cliff. And we all act like, ah, there's this one character that we have a label there's this one person we have a label for. We know they have a disability. We can say they're going to have challenges in life because we have a term we're putting on it. No, we all have challenges, whether there's a term or not. To put on our own version of our challenges, whether it's considered a disability or not. We are all just as fragile and just as strong as anybody else. We're all the same. And everybody is on some type of cliff. And once we realize that, maybe then we know how to talk about disability, which is to say we are all working on challenges and we are all people first. And no label can explain anybody away. We're all sitting there at some sort of inflection point in our life. We all have these moments in our life where we have to figure shit out and evolve. And it doesn't matter what terminology or diagnosis we put on ourselves. We all. We're all the same. We all have the same challenges, really.
- [65:09]
C
All right, everyone. That is our Instagram Live for today. We've got. That's Not How It Happened. It's available, of course, everywhere. And we have a winner of. Our winner is a strong word. Golden Globes don't do winner anymore, right? It's the gold. The award.
- [65:28]
B
My book won a Golden Globe. Didn't you hear?
- [65:30]
C
I heard earlier.
- [65:31]
B
Yeah.
- [65:31]
C
Well, the book, the autograph book. And we're going to figure out how to get it to you, is going to go to michellemcneil009 for just a series of fantastic questions. And so thank you. And we're going to figure out how to find you. And we don't know how to do these things.
- [65:50]
B
Thank you all for suffering through our first attempt at this. But more importantly, thanks everybody for joining us and for the awesome question. And yeah, just for having an interest in this book that means so much to me. There is a lot of overlap to How I Met yout Mother in so many different ways, but it's also its own thing. And it's also like it's my favorite thing I've written besides How Much yout Mother. So thank. I'm so happy to be able to share this with you and the whole him community who have been so welcoming and supportive about this book in a way that just means the world to me.
- [66:20]
C
All right, thank you, Craig. Thank you, you everyone. Check out the book, of course. Check out how we made your Mother. Wherever you get podcasts, tell your friends and we will see you all again soon. Thanks again.
- [66:33]
B
Thanks, everybody.
- [66:35]
A
I am guilty please acquit me. All sins are forgiven in New York City.
- [66:44]
C
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 Lev and our co producer is Doug Matica. Our audio producer and mixer is Alex Reeves at Point of Blue Studios. Our digital content producer, AKA a 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 Majewski. 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 Muse Letters on Substack and check out his music and everything else@joshradner.com. order Craig Thomas's debut novel, that's Not How It Happened, wherever books are sold and check out his other published writings at craig thomas writer.com and you can subscribe to My own Dead Fathers 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
- [68:27]
A
the real question it just hit me. Am I in love with you or just New York City?
- [68:39]
B
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