On this season of Nice Try, we’ve asked why we bring certain goods into our homes. What kinds of utopia... more

The bathroom is our most private room in our private homes, devoted to our most private business. And the American... more

Since industrialization, we have developed a convoluted set of cultural rules and etiquette around sleep—which often run counter to our... more

Fitness trends come and go. But the weight, about as low-tech and simple as it gets, is an anchor in the... more

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

One of the most intimate, necessary, and perhaps loathed activities of the home is cleaning. Who does this work, and... more

The American dream of a suburban house with a white picket fence cordons off the home as a haven, separate... more

Nice Try's second season, Interior, interrogates the lifestyle technologies and products that determine the ways we clean, cook, exercise, and... more

Before she began writing for the New York Times, or visiting glitter factories and the Royal Wedding, Caity Weaver grew... more

What have all of the utopias we've covered so far had in common? They were all largely driven by the... more

In 1991, eight people embarked on a two-year experiment to create a completely enclosed, self-sustaining ecosystem in a domed research... more

In 1938, Hitler’s chief architect Albert Speer started redesigning Berlin for a New Order, elements of which exist today. The... more

The Oneida Community was founded in upstate New York in 1848 by John Humphrey Noyes, a former theological student who... more

Suburban developments built in the 1950s were idyllic communities and gave many people their first opportunity at home ownership, but... more

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

Most people today know the story of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America, from the story of Pocahontas... more

Explore the hidden stories behind how we design the world we live in, and what we can learn when those... more