Back in America

A French teenager arrives in Iowa for a year as an exchange student. He falls in love. He spends the next 25 years in France building a career, a family, a life. Then in 2016, his wife gets a job offer in the US, and they move back with their three teenage daughters. What he discovers is that America changed, but more importantly, so did he.

This is the story of what makes America fundamentally different. It's the only country where you can truly become something new while keeping everything you were. You can't become French, no matter how hard you try or how long you stay. But you can become American. And that distinction changed everything for Stan.

In this episode of Back in America, Stan reflects on the gap between the America he remembered and the America he came back to. He talks about green cards and citizenship, about raising multicultural kids caught between two worlds, about voting for the first time, and about the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of something France could never offer: the chance to belong by choice rather than by bloodline.

If you've ever wondered what it actually takes to become a citizen, what you gain and what you keep, this conversation answers it.