NICE TRY!

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine

Nice Try! is a great name for a podcast, and it perfectly captures the tone of this series about utopias-from the Oneida Community to Biosphere 2 to the suburban developments of Levittown. The host, Avery Trufelman, manages to strike a balance between genuine admiration for the gumption of her subjects and cheerful resignation about their utterly predictable failure to remake society.

Many of the episodes have an understated rubber-meets-the-road moment when the Utopias start to falter: In "Herland," it's when the older revolutionary female separatists...