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October 6, 2017

Suitable for Children (2017)

Who thought that would be good for a kid?

Prologue

Ira remembers the time when his older sister, Randi, asked his mother where babies come from. (3 minutes)
Act Two

History is Not a Toy

There’s a museum in Baltimore that was created to memorialize the Black experience in America. It’s called The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum. Our producer B.A. Parker went there as a kid, and its straightforward and sometimes disturbing look at history stuck with her. So she went back. (14 minutes)

Act Three

The Questionnaire

Over the last few years, there’s been a flood of kids from Central America who’ve arrived in the United States by themselves. With no adults. And often, they have to navigate the immigration system on their own. One of the people who’s helped them is the writer Valeria Luiselli. She worked as a translator in immigration court, where her job was to ask children a series of forty questions. Her story is excerpted from her book Tell Me How It Ends. (17 minutes)

Act Four

Rocket Boy

Paul Zimmer is eighty-three years old now, and he’s still haunted by something he saw in his teens. Something very few Americans have ever seen: The explosion of an atomic bomb. Paul’s essay originally appeared in The Georgia Review. It is read by actor John Conlee. (6 minutes)