This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

If you're listening to this show right now, you certainly understand the influence new products have on the ways we live.

But the interesting thing is, that over the course of history

so many products don't so much get newly designed but get resold to us over and over again

with different packaging.

Versions of the same technologies to help us clean, cook, exercise, and sleep,

all promising more efficiency and more convenience,

attempting to turn our homes into private little utopias.

Or at least that's the thesis of the podcast Nice Try from New York magazines Curved.

Their first season was all about failed utopian

experiments but their second season makes a turn inward into the private haven of

the American dream by looking at all the appliances in it. Nice try also just happens to be hosted by

99 p i superstar alumna Avery Truffman. It's nice to say her name again

Avery Truffman. So far she's covered how the doorbell turned into the home

security system, how the vacuum cleaner went from a public utility to the

first widely accepted household robot, and how the crock pot and instant pot cleverly repackaged some of the oldest

cooking technologies known to humanity. But the episode we're sharing today

is about a self-improvement device that was not intended to make life easier.

It was designed specifically to make life just a little bit harder.

And it hasn't changed very much since its invention. This is a story about lifting weights and how it became a central

component to home fitness.

So this is a full body exercise.

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