For the first time, I am posting a "best of The Dad Bod" episode. These stories of what it means to be a dad today are timeless. Three years and thirty-three dads later, I cannot imagine who I would be today without these dads' stories. These "best of" episodes are a great place to start, especially for new listeners. This one speaks for itself: John, Redemption of Dad.

In my mind, I imagine all of us walking through a rich, mountainous forest. As I walk my path, I can see others walking, too. Everyone appears to be somewhere in the middle of their journey where the end is certain but mysterious.

And then in the distance, I see a person standing at the edge of a cliff. They've reached the end. "What," I wonder, "does the end look like?" And perhaps more importantly, "What does the end finally reveal about the journey?"

I often wonder: What qualities of character found in my parents are absent in me - and thus from my parenting as well? Not for any specific shortcomings but simply because I am my own person, a product of nurture and nature; self determination and the human condition; dumb luck and divine grace.

It’s a quietly desperate situation. Character cannot be purchased, manufactured, or copied for distribution to the next generation. Unable to wrap my arms around something so big and invisible, I shrug my shoulders. “Greatness skips a generation” is my consolation, an ambivalent hope that is wholly dissatisfying.

Unsure what to do, I just did what I know. I interviewed a dad: Meng, My Dad.

This is a special episode, an essay that I wrote for The Dad Bod Substack, thedadbod.substack.com, which is also a bit of preview for the next Dad Bod dad interview, coming this month: my dad.

With the prime friendship forming years of school behind us, making new friends in adulthood is hard. But "school" is exactly where I found myself this past May and, to my pleasant surprise, I made a friend: Alan McIntyre Smith. I was already acquainted with Alan, but on that day, sitting side-by-side in a mostly-empty school auditorium of seats not made for dad bods, we were two grown men talking like young boys with nothing to do while waiting for the teacher's next instruction.

One of the many topics we covered that day was career and side hustles. Our careers are polar opposites - broadly speaking, mine is in business whereas Alan’s is in art. I remember telling my parents when I was five that I wanted to be an artist. I don’t blame them for shutting that down immediately, and yet at 44 years old with a cup that overfloweth with middle-aged blessings, I still want to make art. You may laugh but that’s what The Dad Bod is for me - my attempt to create something that points to truth and beauty.

And if there's one thing that I've learned in my brief side hustle as an artist, it's this: it's hard. It took me five months to complete an essay I loved but very few people read. You don't need to go to business school to understand that's a bad ROI, but I wanted to know what Alan thinks after 30 years of being in business as an artist. It's the kind of conversation that happens when two dads get to talk like boys again.

I've gotten to know Joe about as well as two dads can over five years of school events: close enough to appreciate the work he's doing as a dad to wonder how - and why - he does it. Superficially, Joe is unique at our school for his commitment to his kids' tennis endeavors. He once described to me in intricate detail the cost-benefit analysis and lived experience of choosing a daily car rental over taxi rides for his multiple-times-a-day trips to the John McEnroe Tennis Center on Randalls Island, a small spit of land next to Manhattan that you access via the blink-and-you'll-miss-it Platform 9¾ exit of the RFK Bridge. To this role of parent-coach, Joe brings his own experience as a varsity tennis player at Stanford.

I'll be honest: Joe is the kind of dad who makes me wonder if I'm doing enough as a dad. Also, how cool is it that he played varsity tennis at Stanford? It activates the region of my Asian American heart occupied by Kristi Yamaguchi, Michelle Kwan, Jeremy Lin, and of course, Michael Chang, who became a household name when he shocked the world by winning The French Open in 1989 as a 5-foot-6 135-pound 17 year old.

When Joe and Crystal recently shared their plans to move back to Joe's hometown in Southern California, I assumed it was for tennis. That's just the beginning of the story you're about to hear: it takes place on the tennis court, but the game being played is life and karma matters more than your first serve.

Even though “The Dad Bod” sounds more like a fitness podcast, I’ve come to realize recently that the subconscious reason why I landed on “The Dad Bod” as the show’s name was a hidden sadness in me with the way that the pop culture term “dad bod” diminishes modern fatherhood to a mere punchline about middle-aged paunch, satisfied to trace a silhouette rather than traverse the soul of this incredibly meaningful moment in life. Based on my own experience and witnessing the dads around me, the show’s motivation is to redefine this term, one dad’s story at a time, and by doing so, to help point toward truth and beauty.

I mention all this because this month's dad exemplifies this deeper definition of a dad bod: my friend and fellow dad Chad. With an understated demeanor, Chad blends anonymously into the crowd and yet you all know him: he’s the school health teacher and athletic director; he’s the proud owner of a minivan who used to dream of driving a sports car, the husband who holds communication as the key to marriage; he’s the flag football coach who puts the Jimmies and Joes above the X’s and O’s; and he’s the reason why your kid comes home from school one day standing a little straighter and announcing at the dinner table that he’s trying out for the basketball team. As for his dad bod, well, it’s 40 years old and fitter than ever, chiseled by a determination to be there for his family for the long haul. As Mark Jackson likes to say, "That's a grown man move."

Happy Father's Day! For this special episode, I'm sharing quotes from Andrew's Dim Sum Dad's branch of the Dad Bod tree: TJ, Seven Habits of Dad; Doug, Pursuit of Happiness Dad; Mitch, Generational Wisdom of Dad; and Royce, Epiphanies of Dad.