So obviously we're going to be talking about place and the way that place impacts who you are.

I would love to hear about growing up in Texas.

I grew up around San Antonio in the San Antonio Greater Metro area, and my home, home, hometown is this little town called Sigeon, Texas, which is about

30 miles outside of San Antonio. And it is the self-titled pecan capital of the world.

As in like we are pecan mecca. There were actually a bunch of pecan stores in town growing up.

There were two pecan trees in our front yard in my childhood home in Sagan, Texas.

And in front of the courthouse in Sagan, the sculpture in front is not like Lady Justice with the scales.

It is a giant oversized concrete pecan

with the words under it world's largest pecan. It's my kind of town. Hell yeah. And it's one of those

small towns where everyone knows everybody. My father had lived there for decades. My parents were

small business owners and at point during my youth, they owned both a funeral home and a daycare.

So I grew up there, and then in middle school, we moved to one of the closer suburbs, and then I ended up going to undergrad in the heart of San Antonio.

But San Antonio is home, and that metro area is home.

And, like, in adulthood, all of the complexities of modern life that I've had to make peace with,

I began to understand those complexities in San Antonio, Texas.

I'm Dylan Thuris, and this is Atlas of Skira, celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

Today, I am talking with reporter, host, podcaster, man about town, Sam Sanders. And I asked him to tell me about his life as told in four distinct places. Sam spent 12 years at

NPR. You've almost certainly heard his voice at some point. He's launched shows like it's been a

minute. He knows a ton about pop culture and hosts podcasts like Vibe Check and the Sam Sanders show.

And along the way, throughout this career, it's meant that he has had to move around a bunch.

He grew up in Texas, moved to the East Coast, out to the West Coast, and it all started back

in Texas when he was just a kid with a growing obsession for pop culture, kind of trying to find his place in a small town near San Antonio.

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