Every day as I sit at my desk in my office and write episodes for this show, I look at a photo on my wall.

It's of James Baldwin. He's one of my idols.

And through his books and his speeches. He shaped my worldview as much as anyone

So a few years ago when I was in France there was one place I really wanted to visit St. Paul de V, a small town off of France's southern coast, only about an hour

drive from the Italian border. From 1971 to 1987, James Baldwin called this small French town home.

I wanted to visit his house.

I'd read that it was a sprawling stone house with green shutters and had lush gardens and views

of the Mediterranean.

I also had read that writers, in particular black writers,

often made it a sort of pilgrimage to visit the place.

But I never got there.

And maybe that's a good thing.

Because from what I've heard,

the experience can be underwhelming

mainly because the actual house isn't even there anymore.

You know he was he was in and out of these places I mean not that's the whole thing is like where is James Wallowing

it's home really? What is his home? My name is Baudelaire and this is Atlas Obscera, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and

and wondrous places.

Today we go to St. Paul de Vance in the south of France

to see what was once the home of James Baldwin.

And I talk to a fellow James Baldwin super fan

to figure out where his legacy now lives.

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