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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