this american life: american limbo

I was enthralled by this weekend's This American Life. The theme, American Limbo, included stories of people living completely outside the grid of American life. I was on the edge of my seat, waiting to hear if the Jarvis family would get caught and waxed nostalgic at "The Rookie," a bedtime story for a little boy living in Paris.

Prologue. Ira talks with Lee Qi, who came to America from China. He worked in Chinese restaurants in small towns, live in tiny apartments with other illegal immigrants who worked there as well, apartments that were sometimes in the back of the restaurants. He couldn't speak English, didn't go to school. He was 15. It was like being in limbo, he says: here in America, but not part of it at all. (4 minutes)

Act One. The Family That Flees Together, Trees Together. The Jarvis family, a group of eight, goes on the run from the law–for seven years. They live on a boat, in a treehouse in a swamp. They escape capture time after time. And how do the kids turn out, living a life outside of society, as fugitives? Surprisingly great. (22 minutes)

Act Two. What's French for "Steeee-rike Three"? Adam Gopnik reads a story from his book Paris
to the Moon, about living in Paris with his family and wanting his son to be a bit more American. He tells him a bedtime story about the most American thing he can think of: baseball. But it doesn't work out the way he planned. (18 minutes)