From ‘Iowa nice’ to New England blunt, how do we define ‘nice’ in America?

Have you ever heard someone say that East Coasters are kind but not nice, and West Coasters are nice but not kind?

This hour, a look at what “niceness” is, why it’s so important to us, and how it can sometimes mask not-so-nice things.

GUESTS:

• Carrie Tirado Bramen: Professor at the University at Buffalo and the author of American Niceness: A Cultural History
• Jordan Green: Self-proclaimed “kind West Coaster”
• Amit Kumar: Assistant professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Texas at Austin
• Mia Mercado: Humor writer and author from the Midwest who wrote She’s Nice Though: Essays on Being Bad at Being Good

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Colin McEnroe, Jonathan McNicol, Cat Pastor, and Lily Tyson contributed to this show, which originally aired January 25, 2024.

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