It's me, Alex. I'm one of the co-hosts of WIREDads. Thank you so much for being here.

We'll be joined by Sarah and our wonderful guest, Esmei Wang. Not long from now, but I just wanted to give you a quick intro to let you know what's going on.

Sarah, you know, she's not going to be in this introduction

because she's writing. She's getting the ideas out and she's putting them down on the page,

which is great news. So I am here just to let you know that why are dads as a show where we watch

movies and we talk about dads, but really it's an excuse to talk about feelings and gender and masculinity

and trauma and all sorts of other things that we do in a relatively lighthearted and welcoming

way. We thought if we told you straight up, we're going to have a show and we're going to

talk about how much it hurt

growing up sometimes and how much it hurts being a grown-up sometimes. You wouldn't listen.

Would you listen to it? No. But we figured if we hit it in this like candy shell, you'd come

right along and here you are. We talked about Blue Valentine,

which is a movie I had not seen because everyone told me it was very sad and it is very sad.

But it was also a really lovely journey. I was glad to go on it with Sarah and Esme.

Esme, if you don't know, is an author.

She's the author of The Border of Paradise and the Collected Schizophrenias.

It was a delight to have her.

Evidently, she, and you'll hear about this in the episode,

she wanted to talk about Blue Valentine.

Like, we didn't put her up to this.

And we're all the better for it,

I would say. If you've been in a difficult relationship, this might be a big one for you to

...