The Vergecast - Introducing Nice Try! Utopian

Episode Date: June 15, 2019

Nice Try! is a new podcast from Curbed and the Vox Media Podcast Network that explores stories of people who have tried to design a better world, and what happens when those designs don't go according to plan. Season one, Utopian, follows Avery Trufelman on her quest to understand the perpetual search for the perfect place. Enjoy this special preview of the first episode, Jamestown: Utopian for Whom, and subscribe to Nice Try! for free in your favorite podcast app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, everybody, it's Stan from The Vergecast. We've got a new episode of the Vergecast coming out on Tuesday, but I wanted to share a special preview of a new show from the Box Media Podcast Network and Curbed, our sister network that covers home, cities, and communities. It's called Nice Try. It's actually pretty Vergi. It's about the search for utopias, the perfect place. Every season you're going to hear about people

who try to design a better world, and what happens when those designs inevitably don't go according to plan. This season is called Utopian. It's hosted by Avery Truffleman, who you might know from 99% Invisible. It's a cool show. I really like it. Check it out. It's called Nice Try. It's just a preview.

And I'll see you back here for the Vergecast next week. 500 years ago, Thomas Moore wrote a novel about an idyllic society on an island. He called the island Utopia, which could be traced to the Greek roots, Utopia, meaning a good place, or Utopia, meaning no place. It's a brilliant etymology, encapsulating somewhere that is perfect and does not exist. I'm Avery Truffleman, and I'm the host of Nice Try, a new podcast from Curbed and the Vox Media Podcast Network. It's stories about how people have tried to design a better world, and what happens when those designs don't go according to plan.

Season one is called Utopian, and it's about the perpetual search for the perfect place. You're about to hear a preview of Nice Try, in which we dive into the story of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America. It's not the triumphant tale you might know from a certain Disney animated film. Instead, it's a story of transformative failure and a look at how the stories we tell ourselves about failure inform the way we live today. While you're listening, go subscribe to Nice Try Utopian on Apple Podcasts

or your favorite podcast app. There's also a link in the episode notes to help you subscribe. This is, of course, one of the totally kick-ass songs from the 1995 Disney animated movie Pocahontas. I was four when it came out, but I had it on VHS, and I watched it again and again. And in a lot of ways, in the popular imagination, the story of Jamestown has been equated with the story of Pocahontas.

This is Irene with my Lauren Bacall voice. I know, people are going to hear this voice and not recognize you. It'll be kind of a fun reveal. Yes. This is Irene Bedard. The Voice of Disney's Pocahontas. What? What did you say?

My name is Pocahontas. Talking to Irene, it was hard to figure out how she felt about the movie. There seemed to be a lot of mixed feelings. After all, Irene is Native American herself. I grew up being called Pocahontas in a derogatory way. Irene said that the movie's writers listened to her and asked for her input. But of course, the plot itself ended up oversimplified. History, of course, is always told from the victors.

And this was an easy way to kind of portray the good Indians who helped the masterful settlers, who, you know, created the beautiful America that we now live in. In the Disney telling of Pocahontas, it's framed as a love story. The strapping John Smith gets off. this boat in the new world, falls in love with the native princess Pocahontas in this Romeo and Juliet kind of way, and a kind of peace is made between the English and the local Powhatan tribe. We cling to this love story, even though it's very transparently not true. And she was only 10 years old, 9 or 10, when John Smith came to the village.

In historical accounts, Pocahontas was kind of the cool neighborhood kid. She was very She was very spunky and friendly and was always doing cartwheels, and everyone in Jamestown was happy to see her. She actually helped John Smith learn Algonquin, or a dialect of Algonquin that the Powhatan spoke. So obviously, John Smith was also a real person. That's right. I'm not about to let you boys have all the fun. Aside from being a studly cartoon voiced by Mel Gibson,

John Smith was extremely significant historically. If you think about the story of North American history, like the Bible. Then George Washington was kind of like the Abraham, and John Smith was the Adam. And here's why. When they got their kind of marching orders to go to Virginia, all of the laws, the organization of the society, and the leaders of that society were written down and put in a box. Kathleen Donaghan is a professor of English at UC Berkeley and the author of Seasons of Misery, catastrophe and colonial settlement in early America. She says the idea was Jamestown would be run by council, the names in the box,

and the council would elect a president who would govern the colony. The box was sealed, and it was only to be open when the ships reached Virginia. Because they didn't want them to argue while they were at sea, and they didn't want any kind of arguments to erupt during the journey. Although clearly some kind of argument erupted at some point, Because in 1607, John Smith arrived in Virginia in chains. Right, on the ship, yes, for insubordination, right? This is Karen Cooperman.

She's a historian who wrote the book on Jamestown, The Jamestown Project. She and Kathleen Donagin will be our two experts here. So, the ship arrives, and to everyone's surprise when the men get out and they open the box, they find John Smith's name. This rowdy guy they had to lock up. Smith was the only person named to the council who wasn't of high rank, social or military rank, and the idea that he thought he knew what should be done, I'm sure, was rankled these people. And here's the thing that we like to imagine as so deeply American about John Smith.

He was this common guy. And it turned out in time that he was a pretty decent diplomat. He learned Algonquin, he got to know the different tribes, he eventually became president of the colony. What John Smith understood is that in this new venture, that authority was going to be made up of something different. It was going to be made up of experience. It was going to be made up of what you knew, what you could accomplish, how you could learn, who you could manipulate, that those were going to be the basis of authority. And not anything that came through bloodlines and not anything that came through land and not anything. anything that came through institutions, but things that came through experience.

And he was right. In the colony, there were some fancy men of upper classes who were like, ahem, I told you, I don't work. And John Smith had none of that. John Smith was the one who said, if you don't work, you don't eat. And that was a radical thing to say to the people who were in charge in Jamestown. Although eventually, even he who worked also did not eat. The Jamestown colonists were military men.

They didn't have the skills to actually create a settlement. The council's first letter back to the Virginia Company in late June 1607 reads like a kid writing to their parents from summer camp, trying to sound happy but actually having a terrible time. In that first letter, the leaders praise the land they chose and say they have a good store of wheat, but sign off your poor friends. Eventually, those stores ran out. The work itself slowly transitioned to begging for food,

not growing it or hunting for it, begging for it, because they never had plans to grow their own food. They really thought that Native Americans would give them food. Oh, my God. They thought that that. There's a very famous line from a historian, Edmund Morgan, who writes about this, who says, that is not what you came to Virginia for.

He says you still didn't get around to planting too much corn. The men of Jamestown had a mix of vulnerability, starvation, and arrogance, a truly toxic combination. And these colonizers are getting hungrier and hungrier, and drought comes, and winter comes. They're constantly sending boats, first up the James River and then up to the Potomac, constantly looking, searching, looking for food.

And in one case, Captain John Smith says that as they forced this native group to give them food, and as they pulled away, they saw the women and children on the riverbank weeping because food was so short for them because of the disastrous drought. Men are dying. A hundred and four men landed in May of 1607. By the end of the year, only 38 were still alive. And this does not make the Virginia Company look good. They've got a save face for their many bondholders in England.

There's a serious investment in this endeavor, from wealthy citizens and the government, and they cannot blow it. On damage control, the Virginia Company sends over more men, along with new leadership and new plans. They put all the leaders in the new plans on one ship, and then all the men on other ships. And that one ship, the one with the leadership and the rules, it gets wrecked in Bermuda.

But all the other ships, with all the men, they arrive in Virginia. There are 300 new men now in Jamestown with no leadership, no laws, no provisions, nothing. Just these 300 men, which came to be known as the headless remnant, right? The head was crashed. These were the headless remnant. So here come 300 lawless, rowdy men into what is John Smith's Virginia. Now these scores of new men also need to be fed. And these men are restless and upset and starving and hard to control.

To try to keep relative peace, John Smith tries to separate the men in various posts. One day, he visits an especially rowdy one. John Smith gets back in his boat. goes back down the river to Jamestown, and it was during that trip down river that there was gunpowder on his lap, that a match flew into the gunpowder, and the gunpowder exploded in his lap,

maiming him for life. At that point, he had to return to England. So John Smith is gone, and from there, things are about to get bad. Very bad. That was just a preview. To hear the full story, subscribe to Nice Try on Apple Podcasts or on your favorite podcast app.