It all started with Marcel Proust.
In the late 1800s, Proust answered a parlor questionnaire twice, once at thirteen and once at twenty. The two sets of answers showed how much he had changed, and how much he hadn’t. The questions weren’t about work or ambitions. They were about fear, pleasure, loyalty, and regret.
That’s the idea behind our questions.
Every guest on Roundabout: Creative Chaos answers the same thirteen questions, plus one. Most of them have nothing to do with the work. Some take ten seconds. Some take longer. Now and then, someone surprises themselves.
Here’s what we ask and why.
1. What is your favorite word?
Because words evoke feelings through both sound and meaning, favorite words make surprisingly useful points of comparison. They can reveal whether someone is attracted to language for its music and texture or for its exactness and utility.
2. What is your least favorite word?
Aversions are less curated than favorites. Psychologist Paul Thibodeau found that about 10 to 20 percent of people report an aversion to the word “moist,” and that the cause is the associations the word has accumulated, not its sound. The same mechanism applies broadly: we inherit dislikes from the situations where words were used on us, which makes them harder to perform and more revealing than the words we claim to love.
3. Which do you like the most: books, movies, music, or games?
Research involving thousands of participants has found that people choose media that matches how they see themselves, and use it to signal that identity to others. For people who make things for a living, the medium they return to most often bleeds into their work.
4. Who is your favorite fictional character?
A 2021 Ohio State study scanned the brains of Game of Thrones fans and found that people who identify with a fictional character use the same brain region to think about that character as they use to think about themselves. The character someone names is a version of themselves they have tried on and kept.
5. Where is the most interesting place you have ever been?
Curiosity researchers have identified two drives: the pull toward novelty and the drive to answer an open question. The place someone calls most interesting reveals which of those is stronger. Someone drawn to human complexity names a different place than someone drawn to silence and scale.
6. Who is the most interesting person you have ever met?
This question doesn’t produce an answer about the other person. It produces a story about the guest, because interest is a form of projection — we attend to what we wish we had, what we fear losing, or what we recognize as a version of ourselves. The person they name is the frame; what they say about them is the picture.
7. What is something you own that cannot be replaced?
Consumer researcher Russell Belk argued in a 1988 paper that possessions are a contributor to and reflection of identity. Objects store memories, relationships, and versions of yourself that exist nowhere else. What someone names as irreplaceable tells you what they’re still holding onto from their past, and what that past meant to them.
8. What have you changed your mind about in the last year?
The brain responds to challenges to beliefs the way it responds to physical danger, which is why most people dig in rather than shift. The longer you hold a belief, the more it becomes part of how you see yourself, so changing your mind has a real cost. Someone who can name a real change from the past twelve months has shown that being right isn’t the thing their identity depends on.
9. What is the worst job you have ever had?
A 2023 Pew Research survey found that 53 percent of postgraduate workers consider their job central to who they are. That figure clarifies what the worst job question is really asking: it’s the story of who someone was before they found the work that defined them, or the story of what they refused to let define them. How someone tells it matters as much as what they say. Some laugh. Some mythologize. Some are still angry about it fifteen years later.
10. What is your greatest achievement?
What counts as an achievement varies more than people expect. Some guests name something public. Some name something private that no one witnessed. Some name something they did for someone else. The choice reveals what someone has decided counts as proof of a life well spent.
11. What is your biggest regret?
Psychologists Thomas Gilovich and Victoria Medvec found a consistent pattern. In the short term, people regret actions more than inactions. Over time, that reverses. The things people didn’t do, didn’t say, or didn’t try accumulate more weight than the things they did and wish they hadn’t. How someone answers this question tells you where they still have unfinished business with themselves.
12. What do you fear the most?
Fear responses to old threats — snakes, heights, darkness — are acquired faster and stick longer than fear responses to modern ones. The fear someone names points to what they have built their life around protecting. People who fear losing control are protecting their autonomy. People who fear abandonment are protecting their relationships. The specific fear points to a specific value.
13. What would you do in a zombie apocalypse, and who would you want by your side?
Hypothetical scenarios strip away social performance. When the stakes are fictional, people answer from instinct rather than reputation — there’s no correct answer to optimize for. What would they protect first? Would they move toward people or away from them? Would they lead or follow? Naming a specific person rather than a skill set tells you the answer is about love, not logistics.
And then: one more.
This last question belongs to Tim. He keeps a running list, picks one before each episode, and doesn’t share it in advance. It changes every time. Guests don’t know what’s coming, and neither does Tammy.
The full set is deliberately sequenced, moving from aesthetics and identity through curiosity, attachment, and intellectual character into the harder territory of work, pride, regret, and fear, and closing on values under pressure.