How Men Are All Dogs | S2E16 "Stuff"
How We Made Your Mother
Audacy & Josh Radnor and Craig Thomas
4.8 • 920 Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2026
⏱️ 62 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode is a loose, funny, and surprisingly thoughtful conversation about “Stuff”—both the How I Met Your Mother episode and the larger idea of what we owe our partners and friends when it comes to honesty, history, and emotional baggage. Josh and Craig dig into why the episode works as a joke machine (the mermaid debate, the slap bet payoff, Marshall’s infamous pants, Barney’s doomed robot musical, and Ted getting dragged into Lily’s play), while also unpacking the deeper philosophical question at its center: how much of your past should come into a new relationship. Along the way they share vivid on-set memories (dog-licking trauma, breaking during Jason Segel’s physical comedy), talk about filmmaking techniques like visual morphs and fast-forwarded fights, celebrate the audacity of needle-dropping Iggy Pop on CBS, and reflect at length on the creative legacy and personal impact of Rob Reiner—connecting How I Met Your Mother to When Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride, and Stand By Me. The result is a wide-ranging, affectionate, and honest look at comedy, craft, friendship, and the messiness of loving people while carrying your past with you.Â
Check out the book (and website) PLEASE KILL ME, the oral history of punk.
And Lizzie Goodman’s MEET ME IN THE BATHROOM, covering the New York scene from 2001 to 2011.
Here’s DAISY JONES AND THE SIX by Taylor Jenkins Reid
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Alek’s “Dead Fathers Society” on Substack
Transcript
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| 0:29.1 | I'm alone. |
| 0:31.7 | What a pity I won't be soon in New York City when I see you. |
| 0:41.7 | Please permit me to tell you everything in New York City. |
| 0:49.0 | Well, hello out there. |
| 0:50.3 | Welcome to another episode of How We Made Your Mother, where I, Josh Radner, |
| 0:54.6 | I'm talking to my friend Craig Thomas, who's here right now. I'm staring at him. Hi, Craig. It's |
| 0:59.8 | true. Craig co-created a show called How I Met Your Mother with Carter Bays that I starred on |
| 1:06.1 | from 2005 to 2014. We're making our way through each episode. We're deep into the second season. |
| 1:13.8 | Today we're discussing episode. What episode of this is the second season? Episode 16. Number |
| 1:19.6 | 16. 16. Look at that. This episode is called Stuff. It was written by our, our, our, our, our, our, our, our, our, our, our, our, our, our, our, our, our, our, our, our, our great Courtney Kang. |
| 1:28.4 | Coco. Coco. Coco. Coco. Co. Co. Co. |
| 1:30.3 | Coco, all of us here. |
| 1:32.0 | And, uh, Alec, tell us when this episode aired. |
| 1:34.8 | This aired on a February 19th, 2007. |
| 1:38.5 | And I'm pretty sure if you're listening to this today on the day it dropped, it is February 16th or so. |
| 1:43.9 | So close. |
| 1:45.0 | All surrounding my birthday. |
... |
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