How We Stayed Up All Night | S1E6 "The Slutty Pumpkin"
How We Made Your Mother
Audacy & Josh Radnor and Craig Thomas
4.8 • 922 Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2025
⏱️ 54 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
In this episode of How We Made Your Mother, Josh and Craig revisit “The Slutty Pumpkin,” a fan-favorite early episode of HIMYM written by Brenda Hsueh. They explore how the episode deepens Ted and Robin’s characters—Ted’s relentless romantic hopefulness and Robin’s fear of losing her independence—while also setting up major relationship themes that carry through the series. They reflect on the inspiration behind Ted’s ritualistic loyalty to the pumpkin party, the show’s early use of attachment theory (before it was trendy), the origins of classic bits like Marshmallow and Lilypad, and why Ted’s unreasonable optimism often becomes his superpower. Plus, they share behind-the-scenes stories about Jason Segel’s eyeliner, Neil Patrick Harris’s love of magic props, and the surprising indie rock influences that shaped the emotional tone of the series.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, it's George here. I'm 26 and I live in Manchester in the UK. How I Met Your Mother |
| 0:07.5 | has meant different things to me through the years. I started watching it when I was like 16, 17 and I think |
| 0:12.9 | then it was just a fun show about adults living in New York. I think now I'm 26, it's a little bit |
| 0:18.5 | different. I've just restarted watching it in prep for this podcast |
| 0:21.5 | and I've clocked that, oh my God, yeah, I'm almost Ted's age, which was first kind of daunting |
| 0:26.2 | in this world where I'm, you know, trying to adult and stuff. But actually, the more I've |
| 0:30.3 | thought about it, I think is actually really exciting that if Ted's journey starts, you know, |
| 0:34.4 | in the show when he's 27, I guess I've still got a lot ahead of me. |
| 0:38.1 | Yeah, it's my absolute comfort watch. |
| 0:39.5 | I love it. |
| 0:40.0 | I'm a massive podcast nerd as well, so super excited for this. |
| 0:43.6 | Love you by. |
| 0:44.1 | I'm alone. |
| 0:46.7 | What a pity. |
| 0:48.8 | I won't be soon in New York City. |
| 0:54.1 | When I see you, please permit me to tell you everything in New York City. |
| 1:03.9 | Well, hello, friends. |
| 1:06.0 | Welcome to another episode of How We Made Your Mother, where Craig Thomas, the co-creator of How I Met Your Mother, and me, Josh Radner, played Ted Mosby. We're re-watching the whole show, How I Make Your Mother, all nine seasons, and we're meeting every week, and we're talking about it. And here I am with my bud, Craig Thomas. Hello, Craig. Josh. Hello, my friend. It's good to be here with you, buddy. That was an amazing, and it made me feel a little old hearing someone that was 16. Now they're like, I'm creeping up on 27. It's getting up there. It's, buddy, you're young. You're so young. But of course. But I think there was a there was a sweetest to him. He's like, oh, I got nine years of adventure ahead of me. Totally, totally. I love that that was a takeaway to that comment on how he sees the show. |
| 1:47.8 | We are also here with our producer, Alec Lev. |
| 1:50.2 | Hello, Alex. |
| 1:50.6 | Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Hey, everyone. Well, we are talking about the slutty pumpkin today. |
| 1:55.3 | This was written by Brenda Shea, the sixth episode of the first season, originally released on October 24th, 2005, and in |
... |
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