I think a good alternative is to ask "Where are you from originally?" then that naturally leads to how the person got to be here and what they are spending their time doing here. The person can decide to tell their whole life story or just give a one-word answer, no pressure

I agree that it comes off as pretentious to a lot of people if you open with that in any normal context. I think the right context for it is if you are expected to be sharing life stories, e.g dating, interviews, networking and stuff like that. I think Terry Gross gets away with it in other contexts because she's a famous interviewer.