March 9, 2022 • 28 mins
Welcoming Avery Trufelman to The Pod Club! Since starting her career in 2013, Avery has produced, hosted, and guest starred all over the podcast world. From work at 99% Invisible to her own series Nice Try!, her reporting on design has burst open our understanding of things we often take for granted in daily life. Whether you’re pondering if utopias are achievable or what the appropriate pocket size on a jacket might be, Avery has all the answers plus lots more questions. She’s also got podcast recommendations that are rich in sound and endlessly fascinating. You’ll want to dive right into all the shows we discuss, but be careful, you might find yourself shopping for bidets by the end of it.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, Should I introduced myself? Yeah, I'm every tuffleman, I
am a podcaster and I oh, it's so embarrassing to
introduce yourself as a podcaster. It's and I always joke,
wasn't more mortifying to be a podcaster when no one
knew what it was? Or now that everyone is a podcaster?
(00:22):
It's a podcast? Podcast podcast, Hi, welcome back to the
pod club. This week, we have someone who, to me
is a true staple of the podcast universe, producer and
post Avery Troffleman. Avery tells stories that just like completely
(00:45):
blow up your understanding of a lot of the things
that we take for granted in day to day life,
from design and fashion with invisible to emotions and cultural
phenomenon with the cut. She's got this endless curiosity that
keeps on giving. My personal favorite of her wide array
of work is the show Nice Try. It's produced with
(01:08):
Curbed and it is about the many ways that humans
try and fail to create utopia in our lives. I
talked to Avery when the second season aired, which is
specifically about the objects in our home that we hope
and pray will make our lives a little better and easier.
The show had me completely rethinking things like the doorbell,
(01:28):
a biday, my mattress, things that I see every day
and honestly never think about except for the biday. I
don't have a bidday, but every kind of made me
want one. And that's the true genius of this season
of Nice Try. It makes you walk around your house
and question everything. So I just started listening to the
(01:59):
news reason of Nice Try, and I'm already obsessed. I'm
getting rid of my fancy nest doorbell. Looks it freaks
me out. Wait, actually, well I've been I've been considering
getting rid of it for a long time. I know,
I know, but like this actually kind of like tips
me over the edge, just like thinking about I kind
(02:22):
of like listening to all of the old doorbells. I
just want to go back to an old doorbell now.
Like also like having to look out the window to
see who's at my door. Yeah, I mean, oh, that's
so interesting. Well, first of all, thank you so much
for listening. That's very kind of you. And also, I
don't know, it's just interesting. It left me with all
sorts of mixed thoughts about the doorbell, and that was
(02:43):
the interesting thing to me about the episode. That so
many people who are even very critical of ring like
have one. You know, in every episode we try to
examine sort of an old technology and a new technology,
and I really expected to you know, the interesting is
that it's just sort of a stew and that I
feel just as complicated about the old technology as I
(03:05):
do about the new technology. And there are some improvements
and some steps backwards, and we're just sort of like circling, circling,
circling into the future. If that makes any sense, it
makes perfect sense. But I don't know if it is
that humans are looking for happiness, contentment, or we just
or we just can never, like you said, never be
settled with what we have. We have to constantly strive
(03:27):
for something different, even if the thing that is different
is garbage, garbage, garbage. Well, the other thing that I
want to say is like, there are you know, as
we move in these circles, we do take genuine steps forward.
I really believe that. I mean, of course, there's so
much danger in romanticizing the past. And of course I'm
like so happy to be able to use a laundry
machine instead of a tub of lie, Like it's amazing,
(03:48):
Like the things that we for that. One of the
real bedrocks of this second season was this incredible book,
you know, this iconic classic work of history and sociology
called More Work for Mother by professor Ruth Swarts Callin,
who appears in the first three episodes. Yeah I want
more Ruth. Let's just play a clip of Ruth right now,
(04:12):
because yeah, she's the freaking best. I knew a fair
number of people who were living in commons, but they
didn't survive. And some of the communes Ruth Cowen saw
firsthand in the sixties actually did chug along for a
little bit. I mean, they survived more than one summer,
but three years didn't work. It just didn't work. Why
(04:35):
is just because? Is it just our fundamental inability to
get along? Well, I'm not a psychiatrist. I can only
tell you people have very very strong feelings about their
sexual relations. They have very very strong feelings about their children.
People care very deeply about what they eat, and they
(04:55):
fight over those things. But I mean, people come together
in an industrial context and in office people do work
together all the time in the name of capital, So
why can't we work together in the domestic sphere. Work
is different from life, from domestic life. But that's like
a cultural we call it the doctors separate spheres. So
(05:20):
tell us a little bit about the first season of
Nice Try, and then how you think the second season
relates to that because I didn't know what you guys
were going to do. Well, Yeah, so season one was
not my idea. That was the brilliant brainchild of design
editor Kelsey Keith. So we examined utopian experiments all over
(05:41):
the world, all across history, starting with you know, Jamestown
and the idea that this great democratic experiment we find
ourselves in really was began as a failed utopia, Like
it started with cannibalism, you know, the popular narrative is
the Mayflower, which happened later. The first story is Jamestown
was a total like botched business debacle and it's bananas.
(06:04):
So we like started there, moved on to like Hitler's
proposed utopia for Berlin, just like all kinds of I
might be misattributing this, but Margaret Atwood came up with
the term ustopia, and it's this idea that everyone's someone's
utopia is someone's dystopia. There's no such thing as that
utopia for everyone, Like someone's not gonna like it, and
(06:27):
so we really wanted to take a holistic approach to
looking at, you know, who is this for. Who's excluded?
It was, it was, it was really fascinating. But sometimes
friends would be like, oh, I heard your series on cults.
I thought it was interesting, and I wanted to be like, no,
it's not a cult, like it's all it's utopian experiments.
That it's different. And so when we were thinking about
what to do for season two, of course the first
(06:49):
thing is we were like more utopian experiments. I was like,
I don't know. I don't want it to veer into
cult territory or be like, look at these freaky people,
Because I, as you said, the impulse to reach for
utopia so human and so natural. I don't really want
to otherise it or be like, ah, these crazy experiments
from the past. And so I was like, I don't
want to keep harping on this idea that you know,
(07:09):
better ways of living are not possible. I think we
do have to strive for them. So for the second season,
you guys decided to focus on the object in the
home that can make the home more utopian, more efficient,
that we think is going to make our lives better,
and you kind of do almost like a personal history
of each object. Is that a good way to say it. Yeah,
(07:32):
that's a beautiful way to say it. It's kind of
a personal history of each object, Like it's it's rooted
very much in its history and where it came from.
And we really wanted to be sure to introduce a
modern element. We talked to a lot of contemporary CEOs.
Then the question is are they sort of trying to
reinvent the wheel? You know, the parallels are obvious, you know,
you talked We talked to an old doorbell collector and
(07:54):
the CTO of Ring We talk about the crop pot,
and then we talk about the instant pot. We talked
about the old portable vacuum, and then we talked to
the CEO of Room Bad. Like, we really want to
draw these these parallels, and we didn't want to make
it only a history show, and we didn't only want
to make it a technology show. We really wanted to
marry the two of them. And so for me, I
(08:17):
just think like the process of learning about these has
all been so fun. I mean, basically I've just dived in.
I mean I got a bid day. I have been
taking so many more naps since doing the Mattress episode.
Like yesterday, I just took a thirty minute nap in
the middle of the day, which I used to pride
myself on being like, I don't nap, I'll sleep when
I'm dead. And then I did like cross fit every
(08:38):
day for a week. I just have been putting myself
in all these betterment lifestyle experiments, which has been especially
fun coming out of the pandemic, where you know, I
was so like, like a lot of people, so depressed,
feeling really adrift, feeling really lost. And it feels like
the process of reporting and learning about these objects and
(08:58):
these histories helped me, you know, get my apartment in shape,
get my life in shape, get my you know, my
my sense of self in order, not in a way
that felt like it was necessarily about optimizing, but just
that it was a fresh perspective and a fresh view.
I'm like, huh, what does it mean to have a
(09:20):
better life? It was it's been really fun. Huh that
does sound so fun. And I'm also super jealous that
you got a bedad. Oh. I just find that it's
so bloody civilized. Every time I go somewhere that has one,
especially when I had young children, I thought that I
decided that the day was the greatest thing in the
world and tried to beg my husband to install it
(09:42):
the day in our house, and he told me that
I was a pretentious hey hole. He wouldn't let you
do it. No, oh no, right, I'm going to switch
gears a little bit to just dig into you and
how you became a podcaster and audio person. I mean,
I didn't start out wanting to be a podcaster. I
(10:03):
definitely started out like in radio. It's like, I will
work for a radio station, and honestly, I just couldn't
get a job at a radio station. And then the
internship that I got at this little podcast in California
just turned into a job, and then I stayed there
for seven years and now I'm a podcaster. So it's
just kind of funny the way the way it all
(10:25):
worked out. Yeah, I love that. I love that. It's
like circling the dream but successfully. So. You were then
a producer on Invisible, which is another show that I
love so much. Thank you, and you created their spinoff
series about fashion articles of interest. I did tell us
(10:46):
a little bit about that. Yeah, honestly, you know, I
had been interested in fashion for a long time. I
did not have a good experience in high school, and
I did not have a lot of friends, and I
or middle school actually, and my main source of joy
was just like clothes. My aunt lives in San Francisco,
(11:07):
and my grandma used to live there, and I would
go out there all the time and just go thrift shopping.
And I was walking around a little like tasseled uh
flapper dresses and and pucci swirled embroidery jeans just like
and they're always cheap. But I would like just come
back with like piles and piles of ridiculous thrifted clothes.
And it was kind of my armor in this weird
(11:30):
way that that I really felt I didn't belong and
I kind of got to project that, and it even
though I did care, it made it look like I
didn't care. So clothes are always like a tremendous psychological
source of comfort. And then on one of those trips
to San Francisco, I went to an exhibit at the
de Young Museum and it was a retrospective of the
work of Vivian Westwood, and that was the first time
(11:52):
that I realized what clothing designers do, because Vivian Westwood
is the designer who invented punk, and I didn't realize
that I had to be invented, you know. I was like,
that's amazing. That happened when I was seventeen. And then
when I started working at Invisible, I kept thinking about
Vivian Westwood and I was like, you know, a lot
(12:12):
of the design stories that we're thinking of are very
much applicable to the world of fashion design and clothing design.
But we really didn't talk about fashion and clothes. I
had no idea the importance of fashion until I really
started looking into it. But basically I turned to Roman,
who's so generous and trusting. When I turned to him
and I was like, I want to do a multipart
(12:32):
series about the host of Yes. Roman Mars is the
host and creator of Invisible, and he was like, go
for it. And so I traveled around the world. I
lived out of a backpack and my goal was, as
I put it, sort of boiled the lobster slowly because
I didn't want the Vivian west The Vivian Westwood story
(12:53):
and the story of Punk is the last episode but
that's the most fashion e like it has to do
with a fashion designer. I think early on it starts
with like kids clothes and like why do kids clothes
have pockets? And why are they so weirdly designed? And
sort of moving from what would be considered like traditional
design stories into the realm of more fashioning stories. If
we were going to play one clip one section of
(13:16):
that show, what what collec should we play for the
audience to get psyched about the show? There's this clip
that I like where I go into a police uniform
store and I asked about the differences between the men's
uniforms and the women's uniforms. I wanted to find an
example of a uniform that had pockets and compare those
(13:38):
made for men and those for women. This is the
shop that provides the uniforms for the Oakland Police. And
when I asked the store manager if I could look
at the men's and women's uniforms, this is what he
told me. Are you I'm ready for this? The women
wear the mint really because the pockets are too small
on the women. Wait really, that's why. But there is
(13:58):
a woman's that they make. Don't carry them well? I've
got some over here, but traditionally they use them end
because the pockets are bigger and they can put things
on them where the women's are smaller, which I can
show you. Yes, that's fascinating. After n P I, you
(14:20):
went to The Cut and you you restarted their podcast
in what did you do with them to like really
give the Cuts podcast, which I love, by the way,
to make it what it is? How did you dig
in there? Oh? I mean, honestly, it was so hard
because it was the pandemic and we had started this
(14:40):
show without knowing that it would be a pandemic. I
had just finished Articles of Interest season two, and I
moved to New York and then suddenly I was, you know,
alone in this weird sublet in Brooklyn, like trying to
make this podcast. And the thing that really pained me was,
like I love the Cuts so much, and the Cuts
(15:00):
podcast was one of my favorite podcasts, and so it
was like trying to form a cover band of one
of my favorite bands with like my hands tied behind
my back. I mean, I had amazing help the producers
be A Parker and Jasmine Aguilera, who are just like
incredibly talented, but we had never met before, and we
weren't in the same office, and honestly, it was just
(15:23):
like hard to come up with something to say every
week during the pandemic. It was really really hard. It
was like the hardest thing I've ever done. I mean,
I mean, in a weird way. It was kind of
incredible that we were just like, Okay, let's do it.
Let's make this documentary style show every week. And at
first it was just me and Parker and an editor
at the really talented Alison Beranger, who hosts a podcast
(15:44):
called Bodies that I highly recommend. Um. There were so
many challenges to it that were entirely out of anyone's control,
and I'm proud of what we did, but it's it's
it was. Um. I don't think it was a circumstances
anyone would choose. But you did a great job. I mean,
(16:08):
it's I really enjoyed it. But still, yeah, I thank you,
because I think we were all just like, oh my gosh,
how will we create audio in a bubble? So let's
(16:47):
go back to bodies really quick. For people that don't
know about it, tell me what Bodies is about. Oh
my god, I don't want to mischaracterize it because I
don't want to be like, it's about medical mysteries, and
I'm sure Allison has way more nuanced take on it,
but yeah, it's about people, uh, and their bodies. And
this involves talking about gender affirming surgeries, talking about height surgeries,
(17:11):
talking about I mean, the first episode of this new
season she has is about her pies and whether or
not people who have herpies should only date other people
with herpes. It's very interesting, so I can't recommend it enough.
It's great. Yeah, you know, you're so right. It's not
just medical mysteries, but it's hard to explain. It's like
(17:32):
anything that can happen within a body. And she also
goes to places and I love a podcast that does
this that people don't always want to talk about and
so that some people are like, oh god, I can't
believe that. I can't believe we're talking about herpes right now,
But she does it so well in the reporting is
just awesome, and the sound design is also great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, um,
(17:56):
so yeah, I can't say enough about bodies. It is
also one of my favorites. Oh definitely. I mean, Alison
stupendous individual, really amazing person. So you've been doing this
for so long, and I think your shows are brilliant.
What do you love out there? What are you what
do you listen to when you're not working on your shows?
(18:19):
I mean I got really into this sort of simple
uh writer reading something they wrote story. So I really
love like the New Yorker Fiction podcast is so brilliant
and inspiring. But my favorite favorite, and I always used
(18:42):
to be like The Cut, The Cut was my favorite podcast,
but my favorite, favorite, favorite favorite of all time is
the Paris Review podcast. They pair um really amazing, perfectly
crafted stories from the Paris Review Archive with talented actors
and so you have like Jason Alexander reading Philip Roth,
(19:04):
Jesse Eisenberg reading Benjamin Nugent, and the sound design is
so rich and thoughtful and unexpected. I'm such a fan girl.
Like every time an episode came out, I was like,
I love you guys. I think you're so amazing that
finally they reached out and they're like, okay, every do
you want a cameo on the podcast? Was like, yes, yes, yes,
I thought you'd never ask yes. So I harassed them
(19:28):
enough that I have a cameo on this upcoming season
and I can just die now so excited about it. Yeah,
this is all I ever wanted was to be in
the paris of your podcast. Do you know that I
didn't even know the Paris of you had a podcast,
So you just completely blew my mind and taught me
something new. And I'm downloading it like as we speak.
Oh my god. Okay, So my favorite is the episode
(19:50):
called God et cetera. I believe it's episode nine. It's incredible.
It's one of the few podcasts where I just like,
as soon as I hear a whole episode, I have
to stop and go back and listen again right away.
It's brilliant. I'm roon, Ricardo Phillips, this is Kingdom Come.
(20:21):
Not knowing the difference between Heaven and Paradise, he called
them both heaven. So when he shrugged at the thought
of a god, blanched in the lights of implausible heights,
thumbing the armrests of a throne, that was heaven. And
when he stared out at the sea, feeling familiar to
himself at last, he called that heaven too, And nothing
(20:46):
changed about either Paradise or Heaven. For it, Paradise retained
its earthen, glamor, and heaven because it can't stand for
anything on its own, like the color of rice or
a bomb. Was happy to play along. I was happy
just to be happy for once and not an excuse
(21:09):
for mehem. My last big question for you is if
you met a person who has never listened to a podcast. Um,
I don't know who this person is. This person is
my mother. Actually, let's be honest, it's my mother. So
(21:32):
if you met my mother, you met Tracy Piazza, what
would you tell Tracy to listen to to get into podcasts? To? Like,
what is the gateway episode to get into podcasts? I mean,
the podcast that got me into podcasts is It's a
(21:53):
show called Love and Radio that now is on Luminary
and it was just the weirdest thing I ever heard,
because like, I wanted to get into radio. But there
is this one episode of Love and Radio that I
just think is one of the most hauntingly, achingly beautiful
pieces ever. It's called The Living Room and it's about
(22:16):
it's just a woman telling a story, which you know,
when you have a really good story, you really only
need one voice to tell it. And she has these
beautiful neighbors and they don't have any curtains, and she
just starts watching them all the time and it becomes
this diabolical, sort of real life version of rear window.
(22:40):
And over half a block of gardens and across a
small street, there was this bright window that I've never
noticed before, but it's at the exact eye level of
my third floor apartment. And after a while I realized
that I've never seen it because there had always been
(23:01):
curtains and so it was always i think, dimly lit.
The curtains were often closed, and all of a sudden,
there's this bright light and no curtains and it was
like a movie screen. Fifteen years and that window is
meant nothing. I haven't even noticed it, and now it's
(23:25):
all I think about. There were new tenants and it
had always been a living room and now it was
suddenly a bedroom. And there were these two people in
there and they were naked, this young couple in their twenties.
(23:48):
They were really lovey, dev and they were always naked.
What was the what was the podcast I got you
into podcasts? You know, I'm so boring. It was This
American Life. No, it's classic, classic, This American Life I
love the Santa episode, yeah, where the kids parents like
(24:10):
hire someone to dress up like almost homeless Santa every
year and they have to rescue him. This wasn't the
near brush to Ho Ho Ho Christmas, but a darker,
grittier one like that. One year when Colin was seven
and his dad sent him to the garage for some firewood,
and I heard some bells and it kind of freaked
(24:31):
me out, and so I ran inside. I was like,
oh my god, you guys like I swear I heard
some bells and my my dad was like, no way, really,
you know, and so I went. We went back slowly
outside and basically we found this older man. Colin's younger
brother Adam was there too. This man had fallen in
the backyard and slipped on the ice. But I was
(24:54):
so young that it was like, who is this crazy
man in our backyard? And I sort of are you okay?
Are you okay? And they brought him inside. He was
wearing a very old like rundown weather jacket. Um he
said he had like wind burn and you know, could
you dim the lights? I've got snowblindness. You know, from
(25:15):
the time of the North Pole, and there's a certain
amount of glare that I can't deal with. So he
dimmed the lights. He talked in a very soft spoken
you know, not not a whisper, but where he talked
quietly enough that the whole room was silent and you
(25:36):
had to kind of lean in and it was that
sort of weird, intimate sort of you're just like immersed
in whatever he was saying. And he basically said, you know,
I'm Chris Kringle. I was trying to describe that episode
(26:00):
to my husband when we first met seven years ago,
and he knew the family that no way they had
been in the episode, and it made me he just
like like they've worked in the same coworking space, and
it just made me love him so much more. This
has been so lovely, Avery, I could talk to you
(26:21):
all day long. Thank you so much for coming on
the pod Club. This has been This has just been
a real treat. Oh my god, thank you so much.
Thank you for I'm so touched by your questions. They're
so kind and considered and thoughtful. It means a lot.
Thank you. That's it for the Pod Club this week.
(26:45):
Thank you so much to Avery for joining our little
gang over here. Be sure to listen to all of
our shows, Nice Try, Articles of Interest and The Cut
podcast and it's many it ourations. In this episode, we
recommended Bodies, Bodies is So Good, So Good, The Paris
Review Podcast, Love and Radios, The Living Room, and This
(27:08):
American life story Santa in three D. Thank you, happy listening.
Tune in next week for more pod Club. The pod
Club is hosted by me Joe Pianza. Our executive producers
are Me Again and Emily Marinoff. Our producers are Mary
(27:30):
Do and Darby Masters. Our associate producer is Lauren Philip.
Our theme and additional music was composed by Aaron Kaufman.
Aaron Kaufman is also our consulting producer and special thanks
to Nikki Tour he was just a wonderful human being
who I like to think at the end of episodes.
(28:01):
The
Hello, Should I introduced myself? Yeah, I'm every tuffleman, I
am a podcaster and I oh, it's so embarrassing to
introduce yourself as a podcaster. It's and I always joke,
wasn't more mortifying to be a podcaster when no one
knew what it was? Or now that everyone is a podcaster?
(00:22):
It's a podcast? Podcast podcast, Hi, welcome back to the
pod club. This week, we have someone who, to me
is a true staple of the podcast universe, producer and
post Avery Troffleman. Avery tells stories that just like completely
(00:45):
blow up your understanding of a lot of the things
that we take for granted in day to day life,
from design and fashion with invisible to emotions and cultural
phenomenon with the cut. She's got this endless curiosity that
keeps on giving. My personal favorite of her wide array
of work is the show Nice Try. It's produced with
(01:08):
Curbed and it is about the many ways that humans
try and fail to create utopia in our lives. I
talked to Avery when the second season aired, which is
specifically about the objects in our home that we hope
and pray will make our lives a little better and easier.
The show had me completely rethinking things like the doorbell,
(01:28):
a biday, my mattress, things that I see every day
and honestly never think about except for the biday. I
don't have a bidday, but every kind of made me
want one. And that's the true genius of this season
of Nice Try. It makes you walk around your house
and question everything. So I just started listening to the
(01:59):
news reason of Nice Try, and I'm already obsessed. I'm
getting rid of my fancy nest doorbell. Looks it freaks
me out. Wait, actually, well I've been I've been considering
getting rid of it for a long time. I know,
I know, but like this actually kind of like tips
me over the edge, just like thinking about I kind
(02:22):
of like listening to all of the old doorbells. I
just want to go back to an old doorbell now.
Like also like having to look out the window to
see who's at my door. Yeah, I mean, oh, that's
so interesting. Well, first of all, thank you so much
for listening. That's very kind of you. And also, I
don't know, it's just interesting. It left me with all
sorts of mixed thoughts about the doorbell, and that was
(02:43):
the interesting thing to me about the episode. That so
many people who are even very critical of ring like
have one. You know, in every episode we try to
examine sort of an old technology and a new technology,
and I really expected to you know, the interesting is
that it's just sort of a stew and that I
feel just as complicated about the old technology as I
(03:05):
do about the new technology. And there are some improvements
and some steps backwards, and we're just sort of like circling, circling,
circling into the future. If that makes any sense, it
makes perfect sense. But I don't know if it is
that humans are looking for happiness, contentment, or we just
or we just can never, like you said, never be
settled with what we have. We have to constantly strive
(03:27):
for something different, even if the thing that is different
is garbage, garbage, garbage. Well, the other thing that I
want to say is like, there are you know, as
we move in these circles, we do take genuine steps forward.
I really believe that. I mean, of course, there's so
much danger in romanticizing the past. And of course I'm
like so happy to be able to use a laundry
machine instead of a tub of lie, Like it's amazing,
(03:48):
Like the things that we for that. One of the
real bedrocks of this second season was this incredible book,
you know, this iconic classic work of history and sociology
called More Work for Mother by professor Ruth Swarts Callin,
who appears in the first three episodes. Yeah I want
more Ruth. Let's just play a clip of Ruth right now,
(04:12):
because yeah, she's the freaking best. I knew a fair
number of people who were living in commons, but they
didn't survive. And some of the communes Ruth Cowen saw
firsthand in the sixties actually did chug along for a
little bit. I mean, they survived more than one summer,
but three years didn't work. It just didn't work. Why
(04:35):
is just because? Is it just our fundamental inability to
get along? Well, I'm not a psychiatrist. I can only
tell you people have very very strong feelings about their
sexual relations. They have very very strong feelings about their children.
People care very deeply about what they eat, and they
(04:55):
fight over those things. But I mean, people come together
in an industrial context and in office people do work
together all the time in the name of capital, So
why can't we work together in the domestic sphere. Work
is different from life, from domestic life. But that's like
a cultural we call it the doctors separate spheres. So
(05:20):
tell us a little bit about the first season of
Nice Try, and then how you think the second season
relates to that because I didn't know what you guys
were going to do. Well, Yeah, so season one was
not my idea. That was the brilliant brainchild of design
editor Kelsey Keith. So we examined utopian experiments all over
(05:41):
the world, all across history, starting with you know, Jamestown
and the idea that this great democratic experiment we find
ourselves in really was began as a failed utopia, Like
it started with cannibalism, you know, the popular narrative is
the Mayflower, which happened later. The first story is Jamestown
was a total like botched business debacle and it's bananas.
(06:04):
So we like started there, moved on to like Hitler's
proposed utopia for Berlin, just like all kinds of I
might be misattributing this, but Margaret Atwood came up with
the term ustopia, and it's this idea that everyone's someone's
utopia is someone's dystopia. There's no such thing as that
utopia for everyone, Like someone's not gonna like it, and
(06:27):
so we really wanted to take a holistic approach to
looking at, you know, who is this for. Who's excluded?
It was, it was, it was really fascinating. But sometimes
friends would be like, oh, I heard your series on cults.
I thought it was interesting, and I wanted to be like, no,
it's not a cult, like it's all it's utopian experiments.
That it's different. And so when we were thinking about
what to do for season two, of course the first
(06:49):
thing is we were like more utopian experiments. I was like,
I don't know. I don't want it to veer into
cult territory or be like, look at these freaky people,
Because I, as you said, the impulse to reach for
utopia so human and so natural. I don't really want
to otherise it or be like, ah, these crazy experiments
from the past. And so I was like, I don't
want to keep harping on this idea that you know,
(07:09):
better ways of living are not possible. I think we
do have to strive for them. So for the second season,
you guys decided to focus on the object in the
home that can make the home more utopian, more efficient,
that we think is going to make our lives better,
and you kind of do almost like a personal history
of each object. Is that a good way to say it. Yeah,
(07:32):
that's a beautiful way to say it. It's kind of
a personal history of each object, Like it's it's rooted
very much in its history and where it came from.
And we really wanted to be sure to introduce a
modern element. We talked to a lot of contemporary CEOs.
Then the question is are they sort of trying to
reinvent the wheel? You know, the parallels are obvious, you know,
you talked We talked to an old doorbell collector and
(07:54):
the CTO of Ring We talk about the crop pot,
and then we talk about the instant pot. We talked
about the old portable vacuum, and then we talked to
the CEO of Room Bad. Like, we really want to
draw these these parallels, and we didn't want to make
it only a history show, and we didn't only want
to make it a technology show. We really wanted to
marry the two of them. And so for me, I
(08:17):
just think like the process of learning about these has
all been so fun. I mean, basically I've just dived in.
I mean I got a bid day. I have been
taking so many more naps since doing the Mattress episode.
Like yesterday, I just took a thirty minute nap in
the middle of the day, which I used to pride
myself on being like, I don't nap, I'll sleep when
I'm dead. And then I did like cross fit every
(08:38):
day for a week. I just have been putting myself
in all these betterment lifestyle experiments, which has been especially
fun coming out of the pandemic, where you know, I
was so like, like a lot of people, so depressed,
feeling really adrift, feeling really lost. And it feels like
the process of reporting and learning about these objects and
(08:58):
these histories helped me, you know, get my apartment in shape,
get my life in shape, get my you know, my
my sense of self in order, not in a way
that felt like it was necessarily about optimizing, but just
that it was a fresh perspective and a fresh view.
I'm like, huh, what does it mean to have a
(09:20):
better life? It was it's been really fun. Huh that
does sound so fun. And I'm also super jealous that
you got a bedad. Oh. I just find that it's
so bloody civilized. Every time I go somewhere that has one,
especially when I had young children, I thought that I
decided that the day was the greatest thing in the
world and tried to beg my husband to install it
(09:42):
the day in our house, and he told me that
I was a pretentious hey hole. He wouldn't let you
do it. No, oh no, right, I'm going to switch
gears a little bit to just dig into you and
how you became a podcaster and audio person. I mean,
I didn't start out wanting to be a podcaster. I
(10:03):
definitely started out like in radio. It's like, I will
work for a radio station, and honestly, I just couldn't
get a job at a radio station. And then the
internship that I got at this little podcast in California
just turned into a job, and then I stayed there
for seven years and now I'm a podcaster. So it's
just kind of funny the way the way it all
(10:25):
worked out. Yeah, I love that. I love that. It's
like circling the dream but successfully. So. You were then
a producer on Invisible, which is another show that I
love so much. Thank you, and you created their spinoff
series about fashion articles of interest. I did tell us
(10:46):
a little bit about that. Yeah, honestly, you know, I
had been interested in fashion for a long time. I
did not have a good experience in high school, and
I did not have a lot of friends, and I
or middle school actually, and my main source of joy
was just like clothes. My aunt lives in San Francisco,
(11:07):
and my grandma used to live there, and I would
go out there all the time and just go thrift shopping.
And I was walking around a little like tasseled uh
flapper dresses and and pucci swirled embroidery jeans just like
and they're always cheap. But I would like just come
back with like piles and piles of ridiculous thrifted clothes.
And it was kind of my armor in this weird
(11:30):
way that that I really felt I didn't belong and
I kind of got to project that, and it even
though I did care, it made it look like I
didn't care. So clothes are always like a tremendous psychological
source of comfort. And then on one of those trips
to San Francisco, I went to an exhibit at the
de Young Museum and it was a retrospective of the
work of Vivian Westwood, and that was the first time
(11:52):
that I realized what clothing designers do, because Vivian Westwood
is the designer who invented punk, and I didn't realize
that I had to be invented, you know. I was like,
that's amazing. That happened when I was seventeen. And then
when I started working at Invisible, I kept thinking about
Vivian Westwood and I was like, you know, a lot
(12:12):
of the design stories that we're thinking of are very
much applicable to the world of fashion design and clothing design.
But we really didn't talk about fashion and clothes. I
had no idea the importance of fashion until I really
started looking into it. But basically I turned to Roman,
who's so generous and trusting. When I turned to him
and I was like, I want to do a multipart
(12:32):
series about the host of Yes. Roman Mars is the
host and creator of Invisible, and he was like, go
for it. And so I traveled around the world. I
lived out of a backpack and my goal was, as
I put it, sort of boiled the lobster slowly because
I didn't want the Vivian west The Vivian Westwood story
(12:53):
and the story of Punk is the last episode but
that's the most fashion e like it has to do
with a fashion designer. I think early on it starts
with like kids clothes and like why do kids clothes
have pockets? And why are they so weirdly designed? And
sort of moving from what would be considered like traditional
design stories into the realm of more fashioning stories. If
we were going to play one clip one section of
(13:16):
that show, what what collec should we play for the
audience to get psyched about the show? There's this clip
that I like where I go into a police uniform
store and I asked about the differences between the men's
uniforms and the women's uniforms. I wanted to find an
example of a uniform that had pockets and compare those
(13:38):
made for men and those for women. This is the
shop that provides the uniforms for the Oakland Police. And
when I asked the store manager if I could look
at the men's and women's uniforms, this is what he
told me. Are you I'm ready for this? The women
wear the mint really because the pockets are too small
on the women. Wait really, that's why. But there is
(13:58):
a woman's that they make. Don't carry them well? I've
got some over here, but traditionally they use them end
because the pockets are bigger and they can put things
on them where the women's are smaller, which I can
show you. Yes, that's fascinating. After n P I, you
(14:20):
went to The Cut and you you restarted their podcast
in what did you do with them to like really
give the Cuts podcast, which I love, by the way,
to make it what it is? How did you dig
in there? Oh? I mean, honestly, it was so hard
because it was the pandemic and we had started this
(14:40):
show without knowing that it would be a pandemic. I
had just finished Articles of Interest season two, and I
moved to New York and then suddenly I was, you know,
alone in this weird sublet in Brooklyn, like trying to
make this podcast. And the thing that really pained me was,
like I love the Cuts so much, and the Cuts
(15:00):
podcast was one of my favorite podcasts, and so it
was like trying to form a cover band of one
of my favorite bands with like my hands tied behind
my back. I mean, I had amazing help the producers
be A Parker and Jasmine Aguilera, who are just like
incredibly talented, but we had never met before, and we
weren't in the same office, and honestly, it was just
(15:23):
like hard to come up with something to say every
week during the pandemic. It was really really hard. It
was like the hardest thing I've ever done. I mean,
I mean, in a weird way. It was kind of
incredible that we were just like, Okay, let's do it.
Let's make this documentary style show every week. And at
first it was just me and Parker and an editor
at the really talented Alison Beranger, who hosts a podcast
(15:44):
called Bodies that I highly recommend. Um. There were so
many challenges to it that were entirely out of anyone's control,
and I'm proud of what we did, but it's it's
it was. Um. I don't think it was a circumstances
anyone would choose. But you did a great job. I mean,
(16:08):
it's I really enjoyed it. But still, yeah, I thank you,
because I think we were all just like, oh my gosh,
how will we create audio in a bubble? So let's
(16:47):
go back to bodies really quick. For people that don't
know about it, tell me what Bodies is about. Oh
my god, I don't want to mischaracterize it because I
don't want to be like, it's about medical mysteries, and
I'm sure Allison has way more nuanced take on it,
but yeah, it's about people, uh, and their bodies. And
this involves talking about gender affirming surgeries, talking about height surgeries,
(17:11):
talking about I mean, the first episode of this new
season she has is about her pies and whether or
not people who have herpies should only date other people
with herpes. It's very interesting, so I can't recommend it enough.
It's great. Yeah, you know, you're so right. It's not
just medical mysteries, but it's hard to explain. It's like
(17:32):
anything that can happen within a body. And she also
goes to places and I love a podcast that does
this that people don't always want to talk about and
so that some people are like, oh god, I can't
believe that. I can't believe we're talking about herpes right now,
But she does it so well in the reporting is
just awesome, and the sound design is also great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, um,
(17:56):
so yeah, I can't say enough about bodies. It is
also one of my favorites. Oh definitely. I mean, Alison
stupendous individual, really amazing person. So you've been doing this
for so long, and I think your shows are brilliant.
What do you love out there? What are you what
do you listen to when you're not working on your shows?
(18:19):
I mean I got really into this sort of simple
uh writer reading something they wrote story. So I really
love like the New Yorker Fiction podcast is so brilliant
and inspiring. But my favorite favorite, and I always used
(18:42):
to be like The Cut, The Cut was my favorite podcast,
but my favorite, favorite, favorite favorite of all time is
the Paris Review podcast. They pair um really amazing, perfectly
crafted stories from the Paris Review Archive with talented actors
and so you have like Jason Alexander reading Philip Roth,
(19:04):
Jesse Eisenberg reading Benjamin Nugent, and the sound design is
so rich and thoughtful and unexpected. I'm such a fan girl.
Like every time an episode came out, I was like,
I love you guys. I think you're so amazing that
finally they reached out and they're like, okay, every do
you want a cameo on the podcast? Was like, yes, yes, yes,
I thought you'd never ask yes. So I harassed them
(19:28):
enough that I have a cameo on this upcoming season
and I can just die now so excited about it. Yeah,
this is all I ever wanted was to be in
the paris of your podcast. Do you know that I
didn't even know the Paris of you had a podcast,
So you just completely blew my mind and taught me
something new. And I'm downloading it like as we speak.
Oh my god. Okay, So my favorite is the episode
(19:50):
called God et cetera. I believe it's episode nine. It's incredible.
It's one of the few podcasts where I just like,
as soon as I hear a whole episode, I have
to stop and go back and listen again right away.
It's brilliant. I'm roon, Ricardo Phillips, this is Kingdom Come.
(20:21):
Not knowing the difference between Heaven and Paradise, he called
them both heaven. So when he shrugged at the thought
of a god, blanched in the lights of implausible heights,
thumbing the armrests of a throne, that was heaven. And
when he stared out at the sea, feeling familiar to
himself at last, he called that heaven too, And nothing
(20:46):
changed about either Paradise or Heaven. For it, Paradise retained
its earthen, glamor, and heaven because it can't stand for
anything on its own, like the color of rice or
a bomb. Was happy to play along. I was happy
just to be happy for once and not an excuse
(21:09):
for mehem. My last big question for you is if
you met a person who has never listened to a podcast. Um,
I don't know who this person is. This person is
my mother. Actually, let's be honest, it's my mother. So
(21:32):
if you met my mother, you met Tracy Piazza, what
would you tell Tracy to listen to to get into podcasts? To? Like,
what is the gateway episode to get into podcasts? I mean,
the podcast that got me into podcasts is It's a
(21:53):
show called Love and Radio that now is on Luminary
and it was just the weirdest thing I ever heard,
because like, I wanted to get into radio. But there
is this one episode of Love and Radio that I
just think is one of the most hauntingly, achingly beautiful
pieces ever. It's called The Living Room and it's about
(22:16):
it's just a woman telling a story, which you know,
when you have a really good story, you really only
need one voice to tell it. And she has these
beautiful neighbors and they don't have any curtains, and she
just starts watching them all the time and it becomes
this diabolical, sort of real life version of rear window.
(22:40):
And over half a block of gardens and across a
small street, there was this bright window that I've never
noticed before, but it's at the exact eye level of
my third floor apartment. And after a while I realized
that I've never seen it because there had always been
(23:01):
curtains and so it was always i think, dimly lit.
The curtains were often closed, and all of a sudden,
there's this bright light and no curtains and it was
like a movie screen. Fifteen years and that window is
meant nothing. I haven't even noticed it, and now it's
(23:25):
all I think about. There were new tenants and it
had always been a living room and now it was
suddenly a bedroom. And there were these two people in
there and they were naked, this young couple in their twenties.
(23:48):
They were really lovey, dev and they were always naked.
What was the what was the podcast I got you
into podcasts? You know, I'm so boring. It was This
American Life. No, it's classic, classic, This American Life I
love the Santa episode, yeah, where the kids parents like
(24:10):
hire someone to dress up like almost homeless Santa every
year and they have to rescue him. This wasn't the
near brush to Ho Ho Ho Christmas, but a darker,
grittier one like that. One year when Colin was seven
and his dad sent him to the garage for some firewood,
and I heard some bells and it kind of freaked
(24:31):
me out, and so I ran inside. I was like,
oh my god, you guys like I swear I heard
some bells and my my dad was like, no way, really,
you know, and so I went. We went back slowly
outside and basically we found this older man. Colin's younger
brother Adam was there too. This man had fallen in
the backyard and slipped on the ice. But I was
(24:54):
so young that it was like, who is this crazy
man in our backyard? And I sort of are you okay?
Are you okay? And they brought him inside. He was
wearing a very old like rundown weather jacket. Um he
said he had like wind burn and you know, could
you dim the lights? I've got snowblindness. You know, from
(25:15):
the time of the North Pole, and there's a certain
amount of glare that I can't deal with. So he
dimmed the lights. He talked in a very soft spoken
you know, not not a whisper, but where he talked
quietly enough that the whole room was silent and you
(25:36):
had to kind of lean in and it was that
sort of weird, intimate sort of you're just like immersed
in whatever he was saying. And he basically said, you know,
I'm Chris Kringle. I was trying to describe that episode
(26:00):
to my husband when we first met seven years ago,
and he knew the family that no way they had
been in the episode, and it made me he just
like like they've worked in the same coworking space, and
it just made me love him so much more. This
has been so lovely, Avery, I could talk to you
(26:21):
all day long. Thank you so much for coming on
the pod Club. This has been This has just been
a real treat. Oh my god, thank you so much.
Thank you for I'm so touched by your questions. They're
so kind and considered and thoughtful. It means a lot.
Thank you. That's it for the Pod Club this week.
(26:45):
Thank you so much to Avery for joining our little
gang over here. Be sure to listen to all of
our shows, Nice Try, Articles of Interest and The Cut
podcast and it's many it ourations. In this episode, we
recommended Bodies, Bodies is So Good, So Good, The Paris
Review Podcast, Love and Radios, The Living Room, and This
(27:08):
American life story Santa in three D. Thank you, happy listening.
Tune in next week for more pod Club. The pod
Club is hosted by me Joe Pianza. Our executive producers
are Me Again and Emily Marinoff. Our producers are Mary
(27:30):
Do and Darby Masters. Our associate producer is Lauren Philip.
Our theme and additional music was composed by Aaron Kaufman.
Aaron Kaufman is also our consulting producer and special thanks
to Nikki Tour he was just a wonderful human being
who I like to think at the end of episodes.
(28:01):
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