You know Ted Mosby, architect. But how about Josh Radnor, musician?
Though the How I Met Your Mother star, 50, is best known as an actor, director and screenwriter, he’s also an accomplished singer-songwriter, something he tells PEOPLE has been helpful in maintaining a zest for life.
“It’s made me feel younger. When we’re younger, we’re always trying new things, and generally we’re a little braver about sticking with things until maybe we get kind of good at them,” he explains. “And I think when we get older, we’ve isolated our gifts a little bit more, or have them isolated for us, and we stay in a much narrower lane.”
Radnor only picked up a guitar and discovered his talent for songwriting about a decade ago. But, he says, the realization was life-changing. His debut EP One More Then I’ll Let You Go came out in 2021, and he released his debut album Eulogy, Vol. I two years later. Eulogy, Vol. II was released in December.
“I felt like I had gained a new superpower,” he says of starting his music career. “I really thought people who wrote songs and played them were a different species, kind of, like a special kind of person I wasn’t. And then when I learned how to do it, I was like, ‘Oh, this is a skill like cooking or learning a new language.’”
Radnor says he likened writing a song to writing for TV or the silver screen; whereas before he’d been crafting 90-minute stories, he was now creating a story in four minutes.
“This is all this story needs, is a beautiful melody and these words. And when you get the right words with the right melody, there’s no feeling quite like it,” he says. “I’m so proud of the music. How I Met Your Mother, it was like I was playing the violin in the orchestra or whatever, and it’s so nice to be the composer or the conductor.”
The star is set to embark on a tour in support of his latest record starting in April.
“I’ve always been just a huge music fan, and now to be able to create it is just a real thrill,” he says. “Songwriting, there’s really nothing like it. It’s not the only thing I do, but I’m so glad it’s one of the things I do.”
On Monday, Feb. 3, Radnor announced exclusively to PEOPLE that he and How I Met Your Mother co-creator Craig Thomas are launching a new rewatch podcast called How We Made Your Mother.
The podcast, which will premiere on March 10, will see the duo “explore, episode by episode, the mystery at the heart of what has made this show so durable and beloved. It’s time — much like the older wiser narrator Ted does in the show — to look back on this adventure that occupied a pivotal decade of their lives; how the show changed them, how it changed its fans, and how it changed the culture,” according to a synopsis.
A number of special guests will join Radnor and Thomas on the podcast, which was inspired by Radnor’s wife Jordana Jacobs, Thomas told PEOPLE.
“She has never seen one episode of How I Met Your Mother in her entire life, not one,” he said. “He loves this because he loved the idea of meeting somebody and falling in love with them, who didn’t have preconceived notions about Josh, who hadn’t spent nine seasons watching Ted Mosby on How I Met Your Mother, and the blur and confusion between, ‘Is Josh like that? Is Josh not like that?'”
The beloved CBS sitcom premiered in September 2005 and aired its finale in March 2014.
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