Nice Try!

The Keeper

On this season of Nice Try, we’ve asked why we bring certain goods into our homes. What kinds of utopia they promise, and what they deliver with the latest technology. Bu

The Bidet

The bathroom is our most private room in our private homes, devoted to our most private business. And the American bathroom has long contained a stable trinity of fixture

The Mattress

Since industrialization, we have developed a convoluted set of cultural rules and etiquette around sleep—which often run counter to our actual, biological needs for sleep

The Weight

Fitness trends come and go. But the weight, about as low-tech and simple as it gets, is an anchor in the shifting tides of culture. As workout equipment has become canoni

The Crock-Pot

Countertop kitchen appliances—cookers that range from slow to fast—promise healthier, easier, better ways to feed the body. These gadgets of convenience have raised the s

The Vacuum

One of the most intimate, necessary, and perhaps loathed activities of the home is cleaning. Who does this work, and how good do we have to be at it? When is it okay to d

The Doorbell

The American dream of a suburban house with a white picket fence cordons off the home as a haven, separate from the outside world. This personal, private utopia becomes d

Season 2: Interior

Nice Try's second season, Interior, interrogates the lifestyle technologies and products that determine the ways we clean, cook, exercise, and sleep -- as we attempt to s

Disney World: Celebrating Utopia

Before she began writing for the New York Times, or visiting glitter factories and the Royal Wedding, Caity Weaver grew up vacationing in utopia. Specifically: Walt Disne

Herland: Reimagine Utopia

What have all of the utopias we've covered so far had in common? They were all largely driven by the will and power of a charismatic leader - usually a man, usually white

Biosphere 2: The Theater of Utopia

In 1991, eight people embarked on a two-year experiment to create a completely enclosed, self-sustaining ecosystem in a domed research facility in Arizona. Inside the dom

Germania: Architecture in a Fascist Utopia

In 1938, Hitler’s chief architect Albert Speer started redesigning Berlin for a New Order, elements of which exist today. The Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin features de

Oneida: Utopia, LLC

The Oneida Community was founded in upstate New York in 1848 by John Humphrey Noyes, a former theological student who believed that paradise could be found on Earth throu

Levittown/Concord Park: Utopia in Our Backyard

Suburban developments built in the 1950s were idyllic communities and gave many people their first opportunity at home ownership, but typically excluded African Americans

Chandigarh: The Modernist Utopia

Following the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru commissioned famed architect Le Corbusier to design the city of Chandigarh,

Jamestown: Utopia for Whom

Most people today know the story of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America, from the story of Pocahontas and John Smith, and especially from the 199

Introducing: Utopian

Explore the hidden stories behind how we design the world we live in, and what we can learn when those designs fail. Season one, Utopian, follows Avery Trufelman on her q