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I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago.

I left the Midwest when I was twelve years old, and I haven't lived in a small town since.

My mom grew up in Kansas, my dad in Indiana. They had boring childhoods.

First of all, I'm a Midwesterner, being from Kansas, and Chicago is basically a big Midwestern cow town. It was built from the stockyards, and everyone is very friendly, and it's at the edge of the tallgrass prairie. There's just a good feel to it.

I lived five years in the Midwest, and I loved it. The people were so nice. The people were so open.

Chicago is fun. We've spent a lot of time there, about 15 years. My wife's parents and family live in Chicago, so that's a big selling point.

I'm a kid from the small Illinois town of Batavia, who grew up on the Chicago Cubs and made sports his life's work, although there's never been a day where it actually seemed like work.

I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, north Beverly. It was cool, everybody's cool on the block.

It wasn't until I left that I realised it's not weird to grow up in certain cities and, by the age of 27 or 28, for all of your friends to still be alive. I can think of a lot of kids that I knew in Chicago who were supposed to grow up but didn't.