A couple of months ago, during one of our normal podcast pitch meetings, producer Gabby

Gladney suggested an idea for an episode about this parade that she grew up going to.

And I immediately shouted in delight.

I suggested doing an episode about the art car parade in Houston, because that is where I'm from.

I grew up going to the art car parade every year, and I was not expecting anyone to really know what it was, but you did.

Well, I just got immediately all pumped up and started like shouting because I'm from Minneapolis,

and we also have an art car parade, and I grew up in an art car house.

We made a couple of art cars when I was a kid, and those were our cars.

We drove them around, so I was immediately super excited.

Art cars are pretty self-explanatory.

They're cars that have been transformed in some artistic way.

Sometimes they are painted.

Sometimes they're sculptural.

Sometimes people take these cars they've made and then put them into a parade,

one of these art car parades that

take place across the country.

I have a ton of affection for art cars, but it's been a long time since I'd really thought

a lot about them, about why my family made the ones that we made, and more deeply about how art cars and

art car culture even got started. So I decided to call up the person who introduced me to

the whole thing. Hi, Dad. No. I'm Dylan Thuris, and this is Atlas of Skira, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

In the first half of today's episode, I'm talking with Gabby Gladney about the origin of art car culture and how her hometown of Houston became the mecca of art cars.

It is home to the largest art car parade in the country.

...