An investigation of when and why people ask loaded questions that are a proxy for something else. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.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)Act One: “What do you think about Beyoncé?” and other questions raised by people on first dates. (12 minutes)Act Two: When a common, seemingly innocuous question goes wildly off the rails. (13 minutes)Act Three: Why are people asking me if my mother recognizes me, when it’s totally beside the point? (14 minutes)Act Four: 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)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.
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The question 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? And 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? Yeah. 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.
Something else there, like there was a question underneath the question that they were trying to get the answer to.
Yeah, like there was something else trying to be figured out. And I don't know, like the more I thought about it, and why I was having feelings about it, it was kind of like this weird aha moment of like, oh, I think you're asking who the man is in my relationship.
Right. You're both man. Yes. But one of you is really the man. Yes.
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