Sleep is at the core of our survival. So why aren’t we better at it? What happens when we don’t get enough? And what does our sleep say about us and our culture? On Are You Sleeping?, a new podcast from Mattress Firm and Vox Creative, we're pul

The Keeper

1 Dec 2nd, 2021 39m 52s

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. But even the most faddish of gadgets might just improve a person's life, bec

The Bidet

1 Nov 18th, 2021 35m 42s

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 fixtures: the toilet, bath, and sink. But is there room for another? This week, t

The Mattress

3 Nov 11th, 2021 38m 43s

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. Enter the mattress: a lightning rod for sleep performance, and a tool fo

The Weight

Nov 4th, 2021 45m 28s

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 canonized into the realm of home appliances, this heavy metal object aids in our

The Crock-Pot

1 Oct 28th, 2021 39m 1s

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 standards for how much variety and excitement one can reasonably expect fro

The Vacuum

Oct 21st, 2021 30m 43s

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 depend on some kind of help? A story of community, labor, and dirt—as told

The Doorbell

1 1 Oct 14th, 2021 43m 54s

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 defined by who gets let in. And that is determined by a device that isn’t o

Trailer

Season 2: Interior

1 Oct 7th, 2021 2m 9s

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 sail to the unreachable shore of a better life. Hosted by Avery Trufelman.

Go For Broke: Inside the Dot-Com Bubble

Oct 29th, 2020 39m 54s

Go For Broke is a new narrative series from Epic Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network exploring the 2000 dot-com bubble... and what happened when the bubble popped. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https

Bonus

Avery shares Optimism from the Cut

Sep 21st, 2020 29m 12s

While you're waiting patiently for the next season of Nice Try!, we're sharing another podcast our host Avery Trufelman has been working on that we think you'll really like: the Cut from New York Magazine. In the Cut's first episode, Avery expl

Disney World: Celebrating Utopia

Aug 15th, 2019 46m 23s

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 Disney World in Orlando, Florida. During a recent live event at the 92Y in New

Herland: Reimagine Utopia

1 Jul 18th, 2019 36m 53s

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. How do you build a utopia, then, for people in society who really need i

Biosphere 2: The Theater of Utopia

3 Jul 11th, 2019 51m 6s

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 dome, there was a man-made savannah. A rainforest. A farm. An ocean with trop

Germania: Architecture in a Fascist Utopia

1 Jun 27th, 2019 36m 32s

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 designs that specifically evoke the Third Reich. Following the end of World

Oneida: Utopia, LLC

3 Jun 20th, 2019 37m 6s

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 through nontraditional sexual and familial structures, including complex marria

Levittown/Concord Park: Utopia in Our Backyard

1 Jun 13th, 2019 34m 11s

Suburban developments built in the 1950s were idyllic communities and gave many people their first opportunity at home ownership, but typically excluded African Americans. While William Levitt used explicit racial covenants and other tactics to

Chandigarh: The Modernist Utopia

1 Jun 6th, 2019 38m 41s

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, to signal India’s rise on the world stage. But the city’s architecture and

Jamestown: Utopia for Whom

1 May 30th, 2019 39m 8s

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 1995 Disney animated film. A gripping recounting of the true story of how the

The themes behind Utopian

May 23rd, 2019 5m 13s

We’re working hard to bring you the first episode of Nice Try next week - it drops May 30th! In the meantime, we wanted to tell you a little more about the themes underpinning this first season, Utopian.

Trailer

Introducing: Utopian

May 4th, 2019 2m 56s

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 quest to understand the perpetual search for the perfect place, the ways th