Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. So since I heard today's interview,

I've been thinking a lot about what being nice means and the fine line between being nice and being,

I don't know, not an active agent of your own self-interest, you know? Like, I'm the kind of person

who'll say, like, oh, my bad, even if you're the one who

accidentally bumped into me at the grocery store. And I don't even think that that's necessarily a

bad thing. I've just been chewing at it some. It's what today's episode is all about. It's an

interview between NPR's Elsa Chang and writer Mia Marcado, whose new book, She's Nice, though,

is an essay collection interrogating these questions

surrounding niceness, and what we're even trying to accomplish by being nice.

In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.

Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, Sources and Methods.

NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,

helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.

Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

I get told that I'm nice, a lot. And if I don't think about it too hard, I kind of like that. I mean,

who doesn't want to be nice? On good days, it means I'm easy to get along with. I'm warm. I'm

approachable. I'm someone you want to hang out with, I think. And on not so good days, I think to

myself, am I too nice? Am I easy to take for granted?

Why can I be, like, intimidating for once? Being a nice person is an identity I have worn for many

years, but sometimes it can feel constraining. Like, I'm doing it just because that's what people

expect of me,

which is exactly where Mia Mercado finds herself, an Asian woman from the Midwest,

...