823: The Question Trap
This American Life
01/26/25
•57m
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An investigation of when and why people ask loaded questions that are a proxy for something else.
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- 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)
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Previous Episode
852: Pivot Point
January 19, 2025
•58m
People living in that in-between moment before everything changes.
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- Prologue: Kirk Johnson tells Ira about a strange choice he made during his family’s evacuation from the Sunset Fire in Los Angeles. (5 minutes)
- Act One: Editor Nancy Updike tries to make sense of this current moment by talking to a master of dark comedy, Armando Ianucci. (19 minutes)
- Act Two: As President Trump prepares to return to the Oval Office, producer Valerie Kipnis talks to Ukrainian soldiers on the front line who wonder about what his administration could mean for them. (14 minutes)
- Act Three: Editor Susan Burton reflects on the ramp-up to an era that comes for so many of us. (9 minutes)
- Act Four: In the wake of the Eaton Fire in Altadena, California, producer Miki Meek talks to a woman on a very particular mission. (6 minutes)
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Next Episode
853: Groundhog Day
February 2, 2025
•55m
People stuck in a loop, trying to find their way out.
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- Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks to B.A. Parker about her birthday tradition. (6 minutes)
- Act One: Producer Aviva DeKornfeld speaks with a father and daughter who have been playing the same game for 25 years. (9 minutes)
- Act Two: Talia Augustidis asks a single question over and over. (5 minutes)
- Act Three: Editor David Kestenbaum speaks with Jeff Permar, who is trapped in a Groundhog Day situation — with an actual groundhog! (9 minutes)
- Act Four: Parking in a big city can be a real pain. Producer Valerie Kipnis speaks with a man who has taken it upon himself to try to mitigate the weekly hassle. (14 minutes)
- Act Five: Short fiction from Bess Kalb about a groundhog named Susan, who has her own opinions about the holiday named after her species. (7 minutes)
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