Secret Life of Daytime

All those people you see in the middle of the workday, in coffee shops and bookstores? Who are they? Why aren't they at work? Reporter George Gurley tackled these tough questions. On four separate days, he interviewed these loafers in New York. (11 minutes)

In the early 1970s, a geographer named Roger Hart did a study of exactly where it is that children go during the daytime. For two years, he followed 86 children—all the children in a small town in Vermont, during the hours when parents were away at work. In this rural setting, nearly every child had a secret hiding place somewhere. He explains what the places were, and why nearly every child in town had the compulsion to make a secret place. He published his findings in a book called Children's Experience of Place, which is now out of print. (5 minutes)

Writer Mona Simpson reads from her forthcoming novel My Hollywood. This excerpt is about the daytime life of Filipino nannies, during the hours in which they run the lovely homes of certain Los Angeles neighborhoods.