"That's Not How it Happened" | Instagram Live 1/11/26
How We Made Your Mother
Audacy & Josh Radnor and Craig Thomas
4.8 • 922 Ratings
🗓️ 27 April 2026
⏱️ 59 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This special How We Made Your Mother Instagram Live episode features producer Alek Lev in conversation with Craig Thomas, co-creator of How I Met Your Mother, centered on Craig’s novel That’s Not How It Happened. Over an intimate, wide-ranging 54-minute discussion, Craig unpacks the personal origins of the book—drawing from his experience parenting a son with a disability—while exploring language, representation, and the loneliness parents often feel navigating disability without a shared vocabulary or community. The conversation traces how those lived experiences intersected with his time on HIMYM, why he ultimately chose not to mirror his real life directly through Marshall and Lily, and how years of frustration trying to tell disability-centered stories in Hollywood led him to write a novel instead. Craig dives into the book’s multi-perspective, non-linear structure (very much in the HIMYM storytelling DNA), his commitment to avoiding both “inspiration porn” and tragedy narratives, and his goal of making a story about disability that is genuinely funny, human, and messy. Along the way, audience questions spark candid reflections on friendship, guilt, advocacy, inclusion, creative responsibility, and the idea that every character—and every person—is standing on some kind of life “cliff.” The live concludes with gratitude to the disability community, readers who felt seen by the book, and the shared hope that telling these stories helps people stay connected instead of pulling away.Â
CONNECT WITH THE SHOW:
Official Website (Send us your audio and written messages)
READ JOSH’S MUSELETTERS ON SUBSTACK:
Subscribe HERE.
CRAIG’S BOOK IS AVAILABLE!
Head over to CRAIG’S WEBSITE to order your copy of THAT’S NOT HOW IT HAPPENED.
SUPPORT PEDIATRIC CONGENITAL HEART DISEASE RESEARCH:
Click HERE to learn more and donate today.
FOLLOW THE OFFICE LADIES:
Check out "Office Ladies" at https://officeladies.com/ or wherever you get your podcasts!
Follow on Instagram: OfficeLadiesPod
Follow on TikTok
AND MORE:
Craig’s Official Website (with links to his published writing)
Alek’s “Dead Fathers Society” on Substack
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The following episode of How We Made Your Mother was recorded live on Instagram on January 11, |
| 0:07.3 | 2026. My name is Alec. And on this week's episode, I talked with our own Craig Thomas about his first novel, |
| 0:14.3 | That's Not How It Happened. And we take questions from the fans that were coming to us right there in the moment. |
| 0:20.4 | Here we go. |
| 0:21.0 | 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. |
| 0:41.6 | Hello, humans. |
| 0:42.7 | If humans are seeing this. |
| 0:44.6 | I think they are seeing this right now. |
| 0:47.2 | And my phone just told me that this is live. |
| 0:49.3 | So it is. |
| 0:50.3 | People are starting to join us. |
| 0:51.2 | Hi, everyone. |
| 0:52.2 | Hello. |
| 0:52.5 | Welcome. |
| 0:53.2 | Welcome to How We Made Your Mother |
| 0:54.9 | Special Instagram Live Edition. You might be watching us live right now. You might be listening |
| 1:01.1 | to this as a bonus episode in our feed. Either way, welcome to the show. And my name is |
| 1:07.1 | Alec Lev and 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, of how I met your mother. Craig Thomas. Welcome, welcome to your show. Co-creator. Co-creator. Welcome to your show, Craig. Thank you for, thanks for everybody for doing this. Thank you, Alec for doing this. Thank you for being here to shamelessly promote my novel. Absolutely. Yeah. And we're already getting, we're already getting hellos from Australia. So this is very, what time is it in Australia? I ask Australia to tell us at some point. I'm not smart enough to know that. Someone's also pointing out the Golden Globes are on right now, which is how much we care. No one watches that. 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. 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. 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 the Instagram lives with our fearless leader, Josh Radner. Today, you do just have, uh, being Craig. The word just there is pretty heartbreaking. We're going to move past it. I mean, it's accurate, but we have to do it. It was eviscerating to hear it that way. It was doing a lot of work. I realized that. It wasn't actually. That's what was hard about it. All right. I'm going to |
| 2:35.8 | 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. |
| 2:52.2 | We don't have no idea how this is going to work yet exactly, but if you ask a question... Throwing a dart at the computer screen as the comments go by and whatever, wherever it sticks. I think that's the fairest way to do it. It's going to be something like that. For anyone that asks asks a question i don't know if it has to be |
| 3:07.5 | someone that we choose i don't know but our social media producer emily and or um and or um |
| 3:17.0 | elliot uh who who works with craig is going to choose uh is going to just choose someone now i know |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Audacy & Josh Radnor and Craig Thomas, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Audacy & Josh Radnor and Craig Thomas and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.