For this conversation, we asked you to choose places that you felt like shaped or influenced your life in some fundamental way.

Absolutely.

I have to say the three places, when I saw your list of three places, I was filled with a mild sense of anxiety.

You know, well, I think one of the, you know, and I love this point of view, but I think one of

the reasons why I picked these three places was because there is trauma in each one of these

places, right?

And, you know, and I had just finished writing my book, which is called Joyful Recollections

of Trauma.

And I realized that the things

that influenced me, it's kind of like the way that, you know, a lump of diamond can be

squeezed into coal, right? Like, I feel like some of these places did that. I may not have loved

it in the moment, but I came out of it better.

Sometimes a travel experience is important to kind of change you or challenge you.

I'm Dylan Theris, and this is Atlas of Skira, a celebration of the world's strange,

incredible, and wondrous places.

Today, I'm talking with actor and comedian Paul Shear about his life in three places.

You probably know Paul Shear, maybe known from TV, things like The League or Black Monday,

or you might know him from his very funny, big podcasts, like, how did this get made and unspooled?

Paul has a really distinctive sense of humor,

and it's very clear in the stories that he chose to tell.

Because when I asked him to think of three places that impacted him,

he did not choose memories that made him look heroic or good

...