An investigation of when and why people ask loaded questions that are a proxy for something else. Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks with producer Tobin Low about the question he got asked after he and his husband moved in together, and what he thinks people were really asking. (4 minutes) Question: Tell Me What You Think About This: “What do you think about Beyoncé?” and other questions that are asked a lot, raised by people on first dates. (12 minutes) How Old Are Your Kids?: When a common, seemingly innocuous question goes wildly off the rails. (13 minutes) Here's the video this story is about, featuring comedian Adam Ray. How’s Your Mom?: Why are people asking me if my mother recognizes me, when it’s totally beside the point? (14 minutes) Janelle Taylor originally wrote about her mother in an academic paper for Medical Anthropology Quarterly. Can I Help You?: Schools ask their students the strangest essay questions sometimes. The experience of tutoring anxious teenagers through how to answer them requires a balladier, singing their lived experience to a crowd as though it were the Middle Ages. (10 minutes) Milo Cramer’s show School Pictures was recorded at Playwrights Horizons.
A quick warning.
There are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show.
If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org the questions started right after Tobin and his husband moved to the Bay Area and got a house together.
Tobin's family was pretty excited about this.
They all lived within an hour, and they brought meals over for weeks.
His mom bought them shades.
But this question popped up, and the.
First time I noticed it happening, it was with my aunt.
Kind of out of nowhere, she was like, oh, which one of you is handy?
Is one of you handy?
And I was just like, why does she want to know that?
Like, why does she care?
Yeah, yeah.
And I had.
I had, like, feelings about it, and I couldn't tell why.
And then it just kind of kept happening with other family members.
Like, they would be talking about, like, oh, you guys moved in together into this house.
Which one of you is handy?
And on its face, it was kind of like, oh, we know when you're in a house, there's a lot of things to fix and a lot of things to do.
But it felt like there was something else happening there, and it kind of bothered me.