An investigation of when and why people ask loaded questions that are a proxy for something else.
-
Download Control-click (or right-click) Tap and hold to download
- Subscribe on Spotify Subscribe in Apple Podcasts Subscribe
- Transcript
Nuthawut Somsuk/iStock
Note: The internet version of this episode contains un-beeped curse words. BEEPED VERSION.
Question: Tell Me What You Think About This
“What do you think about Beyoncé?” and other questions raised by people on first dates. (12 minutes)
Song:
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.
Related
Act Two: It's Not The Heat, It's The Humility
Act Four: You Call That Love?
Act Three: Choosing Fandom
Staff Recommendations
Petty Tyrant
The rise and fall of a school maintenance man in Schenectady, New York who terrorized his staff and got away with it for decades.
Will They Know Me Back Home?
Stories of people who've grown so accustomed to wartime that the lives they've left behind no longer make sense.