Ep. 458: "Beck's Situation"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Marilyn.
Merlin: How's it going?
John: Can you hear me?
Merlin: I can.
John: Are you concerned about your volume?
John: Yes, I'm concerned about my volume.
John: In my own... Oh, wait a minute.
John: Oh, wait.
John: I just turned it up.
John: How does that sound?
Merlin: It sounds fine.
Merlin: I used to be concerned about my mass, and now I think I'm most concerned about my volume, how much area I take up.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Not how much I weigh, but like a noble gas.
John: Yeah.
John: I was just on an airplane yesterday, so my mass is really well established.
John: Oh, God.
John: Yeah.
John: They gave me an upgrade because, you know, the airlines are really, really trying to keep all their friends.
John: Uh, but they gave me an upgrade and it was a window seat and you know, it's beggars can't be choosers.
John: I didn't want to say, Oh, wait a minute.
John: I don't want that upgrade.
John: But then I'm sitting next to it, like a seven year old boy.
John: And, uh,
John: I haven't had a like a panic feeling in a long time.
Merlin: An upgrade today is a little bit like the Vikings letting you sit next to a stronger man.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Exactly.
John: It's like, oh, thanks.
John: They're just crammed with people.
Merlin: Everybody's so fucking mad.
Merlin: Everybody's mad.
Merlin: John, people have lost their shit.
Merlin: Everybody's so fucking mad all the time now.
John: I sat there next to, you know, I'm sitting in the, toward the bulkhead and these two flight attendants are just talking about like, they're just running down the list of all of the
John: insane events that have happened to them in the last eight months you know completely candidly like not even trying to not even under their breath just like oh yeah they must get they must get at least one bananas thing like every every day if not every flight they're just rolling their eyes so hard and kind of you could tell that they were looking at the at all the people in the plane just going like who's next what's the next which one of you is absolutely is gonna like throw a pie or barf or you know whatever
John: But anyway, yeah, I sat in this chair and the plane's loading, you know, and this kid is already rustling next to me and his dad is on the other side and they're unpacking all of their video games and everything.
John: And I'm just like, I can't be here.
John: Get me out of here.
Merlin: And like legit, like you're about you feel like you're about to lose it.
Merlin: Well, yeah, just what it felt like was that... You're on a fart tube full of long pigs is what you are.
John: Yeah, that I was in a... That someone was bricking up the wall and I was looking for the bottle of wine.
John: And I was like, what?
Merlin: In the cask of Roderick Keato.
John: What?
John: No!
John: And they're just bricking this wall and it's just like right next to me.
John: And all you hear is like, sir, sir, once again...
John: So I just, so I had to do the thing, which I've been trying to, trying to learn how to do whatever that is.
John: Master your, your, your, uh, verging panic.
John: Where I was just like, you know, what do I need right now?
John: Like, what do I need?
John: And thank goodness, you know, I've been thinking about throwing my phone in the ocean for a long time.
John: And I just, I pulled out my phone and I was like, isn't there some kind of brick breaker or card game you could be playing right now?
John: And I did.
John: I found some.
John: Do you have headphones?
John: I do.
John: But, you know, they were in my bag and I had pushed them down under the seat in front of me.
John: And...
John: The prospect of bending down.
John: Oh, I know.
John: Because I'm, you know, even in a nicer seat, if I try to touch my ankles, I'm...
John: I'm very afraid that someone's going to put a bag over me and that's the end, right?
Merlin: Oh, like maybe you're like a shoe bomber or something.
John: Yeah, like if that kid had climbed on my back when I went down to touch my ankles, there's no way for me to get back up, right?
John: I'm hemmed in on both sides.
John: I'm hemmed in by the seat in front of me.
John: So it would be like, it was, it's like being a sapper in the Vietnam war.
John: I'm not going down in that rat hole.
John: So I couldn't get down there to get my headphones out.
Merlin: I feel like that is the, of all of the things that can help me.
Merlin: Well, one way to put it is that all of my other senses, in addition to my brain will continue to feel overwhelmed until I can deal with what I hear.
Merlin: And I,
Merlin: And the thing that most takes the edge off for me is noise-canceling headphones.
Merlin: Like, you could pull something over your eyes, but you're still going to be hearing the zzzz and the din and all that stuff.
Merlin: But, like, it's easier for me to take the edge off with headphones and more difficult for me to take any edge off without them.
Merlin: But just being so constrained in that little seat, like, I'm not a giant.
Merlin: I'm not a large man.
Merlin: But the allotted... I'm a quiet man.
Merlin: Is he a great man?
Yeah.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: It was a business of pleasure.
Merlin: Why would you subject yourself to mood?
John: You know, I noticed on this flight too, how many flights have I been on?
John: 100 billion trillion.
John: But on this flight, and I don't know what it was, but I became conscious of this like...
John: Really low frequency, but incredibly encompassing.
John: It wasn't like a thing you could...
Merlin: choose to hear or not hear it was something that was bodily shaking the plane but not shaking it wasn't vibrating it was just this through the entire flight well it's like the way it's like the difference between like did my just my kid just sit down too fast and hard on the couch versus an earthquake they both are a kind of movement but but one of them is a deeper kind of movement it's one thing for your plane to be rattled i mean you know what i'm talking
Merlin: about it's one thing to be rattled by a temporary like little um pocket of air turbulent thing but then there's but the whole like the woo woo is is a deeper more existential bowing of the planet well it is and and and what i mean i know there are listeners to our show and i hope they do write me and explain this to me but i know this is a familiar sensation and
John: And I tried for a long time to figure out what was exactly happening.
John: It's not a thing.
John: The sound and the energy of it was...
John: I think too great to just be some piece of machinery.
John: Like you're saying, it wasn't just like something going... Or like... It was something... Or even like the one that I find the most upsetting that I think upsets a lot of people.
Merlin: And I'm not an anxious flyer in the normal sense.
Merlin: Like, I just don't give a thought to the fact that I'm, you know, flying through the air in a seat.
Merlin: But there is that one thing that happens... I think it's not long after takeoff that happens with the wing.
Merlin: It's a very high-pitched, like a...
Merlin: Yeah, but it's also just an erratic, it isn't like a whole note that somebody's successfully holding.
Merlin: It's a little bit more wobbly, almost like a Bernard Herrmann string section.
Merlin: It's a little more like...
Merlin: Or some kind of aileron or whatever is changing.
Merlin: That's the one that gets me.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: It's definitely something hydraulic.
John: It sounds concerning.
John: And the thing is, what I noticed on this was, I'm still 100% thumbs up on flying.
John: A couple of times in the last week, I flew on a much smaller airplane, a Cessna 208, which is not a...
John: which is not like a, like a personal sized plane.
John: It's, it's got eight seats, but definitely like a little plane.
John: And I'm, I'm all about it.
John: Like, yeah, let's do, you know, let's fly.
John: And looking out the window of a flying airplane, I don't have the problem of like, Oh, this is unnatural.
John: I don't want to be in the sky.
John: Like, it's not that at all.
John: I'm really into the sky.
John: And to the 208, I was sitting behind the pilot and my knees were touching the back of his seat.
John: And I was like, I don't like this.
John: And then he climbed in and pulled his seat forward.
John: And all of a sudden I had 10 inches of room between my knee and his seat.
John: And I was like, I like this.
John: Like, it's just the thing.
John: against my knee you know it's as simple as like how big is my chair and uh but this this throbbing somebody's gonna write and tell me what it is yeah but it felt like you're saying existential and and and and it was true it's a five six hour flight it was true throughout the entire flight this sound this throbbing like deep pulse and uh
John: I know I've been on airplanes that have had this throbbing many times.
John: This is just the first time that I really focused on it, and I couldn't tell what was doing it.
John: Was it something in the sink of the engines?
John: I just, I don't know.
John: And I look forward to somebody telling.
John: But no, I was in Hawaii for the last...
John: 10 days.
John: I heard that's where all the billionaires are moving now.
John: Yeah, it is.
John: That's where the billionaires are moving.
John: Actually, the island I was on has a kind of... I went to Molokai, which I'd never been to.
John: That's not a real island.
John: It's one of the islands that no one goes to, and it's the one... Are you sure?
John: Well, it's the one called... It's the one that everybody thinks of as the leper colony island.
John: Oh.
John: Um, although the actual like historical leper colony is, was a tiny, tiny little peninsula on a very large island.
John: It's not, you know, but I grew up thinking like, oh, and one of the Hawaiian islands is only for lepers.
Merlin: Which, while technically true, does not get at the fact that it wasn't chock-a-block with lepers all over the whole island.
Merlin: It was just in one little space, right?
John: It was just in one little space, yeah.
John: And also, leprosy has been a curable— Was it Hansen's disease now?
Merlin: Hansen's disease.
Merlin: That's because Beck had it at one point.
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, it's hard, you know, hard to... I can't find my bell.
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John: Well, you know, there's been a cure for it for a long time.
John: There are a few people still living there who have lived there their whole lives.
John: Is it treatable?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, I'm sorry.
Merlin: Put differently.
Merlin: I mean, I know there's lots of things that are treatable.
Merlin: Can you make leprosy go away?
John: Hansen's disease?
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: Beck's situation.
Merlin: Is that something you can make go away?
John: I believe that it is curable.
John: It's a bacterial disease.
John: infection okay and so um you can give it uh well sure okay all right all right all right cool cool something something something it's it's no longer it's not either colony or die at this point or colony and die i suppose
John: Right.
John: I think that it's still, you know, that still like rages in certain parts of the world.
Merlin: But if any of our listeners have have that situation, I apologize.
Merlin: I'm not trying to be unkind.
Merlin: I have some holes in my face, you know, from the time I had chicken pox.
Merlin: So, like, I'm not trying to be unkind.
Merlin: Like if you're, you know, if you're if your hog fell off or something, I don't want to be a dick about it.
Merlin: Oh, gosh.
Merlin: Too soon.
John: What's weird is that in the old days.
John: If you had if you had Hansen's disease, and this is the true of this place on Molokai, they would just take you from your family.
John: They declared you dead and they put you on this thing and you were that was it.
Merlin: You never did you get to chill or did they add insult to injury or add torture injury by making it work or something?
John: No, it seemed, well, I mean, I think you work just to keep busy.
Merlin: You know, sort of like the whole failure to communicate, you know, like, what's the movie, Cool Hand Luke, where, like, the whole point of what they're doing is that, and really, you know, any kind of quote-unquote hard labor, whether that's happening in, you know, Poland or the former Soviet Union, was mostly just to make your life miserable and potentially kill you.
Merlin: Like, it's not a resort, but it's not specifically like a prison, right?
Merlin: Do you know?
Merlin: How much do you know about this?
John: It's not a resort because you do have the risk of your nose falling off.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: And the drinks aren't included.
Merlin: It's not sandals.
John: They should say in the sandals.
John: There was a priest.
John: There was a nun.
Merlin: There's only one parachute left on the Molokai.
John: They were trying to help you live a nicer life.
John: And the thing is, you could live for a long time.
John: I mean, there are people that... We sure are going to catch leprosy again, you know?
John: Yeah, but they were cured and the Hawaiian government said, well, you don't have to be on the colony anymore.
John: And they said, no, you know, we've lived here a long time.
John: We're going to stick it out.
John: So there's some old people still living there who are cured of leprosy.
John: But they've chosen to make that their home.
John: Wow.
John: Yeah.
John: No kidding.
John: Yeah.
John: And you can't go there.
John: I mean, or you can.
John: I think you have to be 18 to go.
John: Okay.
John: But it's like a donkey trail.
John: There's no road.
John: You can't walk down there.
John: You have to take a guided donkey trail, which I didn't do.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, the movie's not called Road to Hansonville.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Yeah.
Right.
John: But I had never been to the island, and it's a very different experience than going to Oahu or Maui or the big island.
John: I've only been to Kauai.
John: Yeah, I've never been to Kauai.
Merlin: Mind me, I've only been to Hawaii once.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But there's, yeah, there's, you've got Honolulu, Waikiki, you've got all the islands.
Merlin: Now you're going to make me look this up so I see where it is.
Merlin: Is it that little tail that you see?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: It's not little.
John: It's surprisingly large.
John: I mean, it's not big.
John: It's only 10 miles across.
Merlin: Oh, what a pretty island.
Merlin: Oh, that's beautiful.
Merlin: I'm so ignorant, John.
John: Well, you don't have to...
John: Look how big that is.
John: Knowing things about Hawaii is a kind of specialization.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, but I've lived on the West Coast for 20 years now.
Merlin: I should know this.
Merlin: It kind of looks like a dune sandworm a little bit.
Merlin: It's cool looking.
John: It's cool.
John: I mean, there's so much to know about California.
John: Think about, you've lived in California for decades.
John: There are probably still tons of things about California.
Merlin: I know about the Sunset and the Castro and the Western Edition.
Merlin: I've been on Filmore Street several times.
Oh.
John: If someone asked you to take out a piece of paper right now and write down every suburb you could think of or every component you could think of of Los Angeles, all of the little neighborhoods of Los Angeles, how many do you think you could get?
Merlin: Six.
Merlin: I could do West Hollywood, the place where Adam lived near the stadium, Silver Lake, maybe.
Merlin: Chateau Marmont.
Merlin: Yeah, that's a place.
Merlin: Gary Cooper.
Merlin: Did I say West Hollywood already?
Merlin: Yep, yep.
Merlin: West Philadelphia.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: Oh, West Philadelphia.
Merlin: Is that where his parents had gone on a month's vacation?
Merlin: Wait a minute.
Merlin: No, week.
Merlin: How long were... Wait a minute.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Well, the thing I say about California, because it is one of those things that one... I mean, who fucking cares?
Merlin: California, it is said.
Merlin: It is said.
Merlin: Uberless.
Merlin: Uberless.
Merlin: Well, sure, Governor Jerry Brown, Governor Moonbeam.
Merlin: But you've got the thing... Here's the thing to know.
Merlin: I've been told that California has or... I don't like to use the word is.
Merlin: How long can people say is?
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: You don't like is?
Merlin: Are you a knight of meat?
Merlin: Well, it depends.
Merlin: It depends on how you define...
Merlin: I don't like it when people say things like California, I am so OCD.
Merlin: You don't like am, you don't like is.
Merlin: No, semi, semi aren't, semi is not.
Merlin: I think it's important to know California represents the ninth largest economy in the world.
Merlin: It has a larger economy, about the same size economy, supposedly as like Italy.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I mean, because that really, to help you understand, like, why is it that cars don't take leaded gas anymore?
Merlin: Well, in some form or fashion, I bet you can trace that back to California.
Merlin: Almost anything that's happened is because California represents such a large part of the United States economy that whether, you know, as goes California, so goes the U.S.
Merlin: and eventually the world, right?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And I think that's, it's not, it's worth keeping that in mind when you think about what a weird state this is.
Merlin: But the other thing that's huge about California, I know you know this, but forgive me.
Merlin: You get out much past Malcolm's country, you go to lots of areas in California, this ain't no blue state.
Merlin: We elected Ronald Reagan.
Merlin: And here's the thing, like, no matter, I'm about to do a turns out on you, I'm about to do a Maggie Haberman New York Times on you.
Merlin: Like, no matter what you know, it's probably wrong or not complete.
Merlin: Which is to say, well, in the sense that there's no easy way to define any of this.
Merlin: I remember reading a book.
Merlin: I was a weird kid.
Merlin: I read a book in early high school called Megatrends.
Merlin: And it was about these 10 big things that were likely to happen in the U.S.
Merlin: based on certain kinds of movements.
Merlin: And a lot of them turned out to be true, you know, including things like... Killer bees and... No, quicksand, gorilla suits.
Merlin: No, it was more like stuff like, you know, Florida will become a place lots of people move to.
Merlin: This economy will change from this to that and all these things.
Merlin: But like, you know, in California, it's...
Merlin: Uh, how can I put this?
Merlin: So California, like, yeah, if you look at, if you were to pull out, you know, parts of Hollywood, San Francisco, uh, um, you know, you've got a certain kind of political or let's do it.
John: Let's pull them out.
Merlin: Berkeley.
Merlin: You have a certain kind of worldview, but Berkeley and San Francisco are not the same thing.
Merlin: very much a coastline of Scotland problem.
Merlin: Like Berkeley is fundamentally different even just politically in many ways from San Francisco.
Merlin: Also, what year of San Francisco are we talking about?
Merlin: Forgive me, I'm just trying to slice up a monolith here.
Merlin: But then, for example, you think of San Diego.
Merlin: Oh yeah, San Diego, that's cool.
Merlin: It's really warm.
Merlin: You can get to Mexico.
Merlin: That's also very much a military-ish city.
Merlin: That's a large town, too.
Merlin: But you've also introduced the idea of, what do you mean by military?
Merlin: Everybody's pro-war?
Merlin: No, I don't mean that.
Merlin: I mean, the same kinds of sensibilities that you might have experienced when you've worked with people who were in the military, you can expect in San Diego.
Merlin: Is that a bunch of gun nuts?
Merlin: Not necessarily.
Merlin: So I'm just saying it's that's total coastline of Scott.
Merlin: And then you go all the way up to Reagan country.
Merlin: You get up to Eureka where you're practically in Seattle at that point.
Merlin: The whole place is so big and anything you try to say that is or equals California is going to fall apart so many ways along the way.
Merlin: This is something I really accepted about the entire United States during COVID is that it's so difficult to say anything about any area because, again, coastline of Scotland, the closer you get, the more you zoom in, the smaller your measurement of something is.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I live in the most conservative.
Merlin: I live in the most politically conservative area in San Francisco, at least at a recent point.
Merlin: And still, I mean, well, it's like it's a lot of like middle class, upper middle class Chinese people who have like a worldview that's not the same as people, you know, who moved into a place in Soma last week.
Merlin: Anyway, I just I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I'm very open to the idea that.
Merlin: I'm willing to trade away some of the, let me give you a vision.
Merlin: My vision is to get to a place where I'm willing to trade away some of the, apart from the easy ha-has that a podcast host would want to offer about easy lines, I'm trying to become more comfortable with the idea that any kind of rounding up that we try to do about people tends to fall apart as soon as you get a count of how many people were being rounded up.
Merlin: You know what I mean, though, in a math sense.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: You don't say California is, because what is California?
John: And what is, is?
Merlin: I guess so.
Merlin: It didn't sound as smart as I thought it would.
Merlin: And I'm not really sure what it has to do with the sandworm of Molokai.
John: Well, what's interesting is San Diego is the second largest city in California.
John: Did you know that?
John: Bigger than San Francisco.
Merlin: You always think of San Francisco as number two.
Merlin: I think of San Francisco as being cosmopolitan, but not large.
Merlin: I think of LA, right?
Merlin: LA than San Diego?
Merlin: San Diego, San Diego is like, well, that's also like saying like, you know, looking at Florida.
Merlin: Well, okay.
Merlin: What Florida are you talking about?
Merlin: The Southeastern corridor from Miami, you know, up through the treasure coast, like that is a megalopolis.
Merlin: It just happens to be a very narrow one defined by I-95.
Merlin: It's like, but like there's this incredibly, this long, narrow corridor that is now becoming more and more the way America works.
Merlin: And this is why when the political pundits want to get out and say a word like, what's a word?
Merlin: A word like Minnesota, for example.
Merlin: Well, you got Minnesota and you got these, which is maybe, there's some states in the U.S.
Merlin: Let's just even talk about how they vote.
Merlin: It's a mostly red state, except for these two enormous blue pimples that represent a huge mass of the people who actually vote in things.
Merlin: So what do you say that state, quote unquote, is?
Merlin: Well, it is what it is.
Merlin: And there's not a lot to be gained by trying to round.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I'm trying to grow, John.
Merlin: I want to hear more about Molokai.
John: That's wonderful.
John: I'm happy that you're trying to grow.
John: California's big.
John: It's a big, big place.
John: It is.
John: It should be seven states.
John: That's what they said.
John: California should be seven states.
John: The United States should be 100 states.
John: If the United States was 100 states...
John: then I think everything would be fine and we would all love each other.
John: The puzzles would be more difficult, but more fun.
John: I bet we get rid of a lot.
John: That's the thing.
John: We get rid of a lot.
John: I mean, a puzzle of the United States where each piece is just one of the states, it's too boring.
John: That's for little kids.
Merlin: I was watching a Veep the other night where a very funny episode where she's, it's one of the seasons where she's running for president and she's in Iowa and someone gives her a butter sculpture of Iowa.
Merlin: And, of course, it's like the puzzle pieces where you're like, which rectilinear state is this?
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
John: You know what I mean?
John: But, you know, Iowa is four different states, really.
John: When you get into Iowa, it's like you think you know Iowa.
John: I bet you Missouri's four different states.
John: I bet there's a butt-ton of states that are several different states.
John: Yeah, I think Missouri is kind of just two states.
Merlin: Missouri is two states.
Merlin: Your mom and I are both from Ohio.
Merlin: We were both born in Ohio.
Merlin: And whenever somebody says Ohio is dot, dot, dot, like I'm, I'm again, I haven't lived there in such a long time, but I knew even not very long after we had moved to Florida from Ohio that Cincinnati is unique in the true sense of the word as a kind of city, especially as a kind of city in Ohio.
Merlin: It's very conservative, very close to Indiana and Kentucky, and more culturally similar in many ways.
Merlin: My whole family's from Kentucky.
Merlin: They weren't born in Toledo, right?
Merlin: Your mom is from in Ohio.
Merlin: Then in some ways, it's much closer to, I mean, it is a Midwestern farm area your mom is from, right?
Merlin: They don't make tires.
Merlin: It's not that their city was gone.
Merlin: And then you get Columbus, which is a little bit more metropolitan because it's a capital.
Merlin: You get Dayton, which has some industry in it.
Merlin: And it's like, you know, it's a big fucking state.
Merlin: Ohio is what?
John: The thing about if we're going to have 100 states in the United States and you've got a state like Ohio, that's really six states.
John: You're going to have to lose some states, right?
John: Oh, you're saying like one in, one out?
Merlin: Yeah, that Delaware is really just part of Philadelphia.
Merlin: My wife's whole family, obviously, is from Rhode Island.
Merlin: Rhode Island could be folded into three different states.
Merlin: Yeah, let's just call Rhode Island... Pick a lane, Rhode Island.
Merlin: I can do Mid-Atlantic.
Merlin: Are you going to try and be like baby Massachusetts?
John: They're all swamp Yankees there.
Merlin: We have family in Swansea, and you dip in and out, and you're like, okay, here you go.
Merlin: Here's one more.
Merlin: The town inside of Providence, where my wife is from, which is called Barrington.
Merlin: Barrington is a dry city.
Merlin: There's counties that are dry and not dry.
Merlin: You have to drive into Massachusetts, which takes you, like, three minutes to, like, go get beer on a Sunday.
Merlin: Other places, and then you got to get the alcohol.
Merlin: I'm just saying, all those rules, they have, like, a lot of, like, South Carolina-style rules in parts of Rhode Island.
Merlin: All completely wackadoo.
Merlin: Do we need an entire...
Merlin: You know, this is nothing against... Ted Leo, I don't know if you're a fan of our program.
Merlin: I'm just here to say this is nothing against Rhode Island or New Jersey.
Merlin: But those... I'm sorry, Ted.
Merlin: Both of the states that you're from could be easily folded into other states.
Merlin: No, I'm just saying if we had to let a new guy in, let's say you only got 50 slots.
Merlin: Maybe we have a table we really liked that has only 50 seats.
Merlin: And so if we want to invite in somebody new, like in your case, for example, Delaware.
Merlin: I don't know where all the credit...
Merlin: mining, laundering stuff will go if we get rid of Delaware, but if Delaware is, if somebody wants in, Delaware might have to be out.
Merlin: Is that what you're saying?
John: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: Yeah, there are some states that are just states.
John: There are some states that think they're two states, but they really don't.
John: They shouldn't be any state.
Merlin: So we combine some, we break up others.
Merlin: California, as you say, well, let's not be cute about it.
Merlin: If we decided to break California, I mean, arbitrarily, if we're going on, I guess it needs to be geographic.
Merlin: Otherwise, we'd confuse the children.
Merlin: Say for the sake of argument, you make four Californias.
Merlin: And that might be, you know, east-west might be north-south in parts, but we swath it up into four reasonable areas that make life easier for people.
Merlin: Then some other things are going to have to move, but there's, John, there's a whole bunch of stuff.
Merlin: Nobody wants to talk about this because they think that since they're on the east coast and in Eastern Standard Time, they think they're really special.
Merlin: We could fold in a lot of mid-Atlantic states, a lot of colonies, if I'm being honest.
John: If you think about Eastern California, it's really Nevada or Nevada is Eastern California.
John: But Nevada doesn't need to be separate from Eastern California.
John: Oh, shit, dog.
Merlin: That changes everything.
John: Yeah.
John: So if California is going to be four states, you got to lose two states if we're only going to have 100 states.
John: I think it's a better plan.
John: I think it would be easy.
John: Idaho likes to think it's two states, but it's really not.
John: Idaho is just part of Western Montana.
Merlin: But in the case of Virginia versus West Virginia, real different things.
John: They could be all one state.
John: I mean, it'd be a big state.
Merlin: Give it all to the First Nations people.
Merlin: That's what I say.
Merlin: Give it all back.
Merlin: And I don't mean like reservation style.
Merlin: You can come and get it anytime you want.
Merlin: You don't need a reservation.
Merlin: You take the whole...
Merlin: How about any rectilinear state goes to the Native Americans?
Merlin: If it's a rectilinear state, they get it back.
John: Pennsylvania.
Merlin: That's a good one.
Merlin: It's Keystone State, they say.
John: Yeah, looks like a Keystone.
Merlin: Isn't there almost exactly two Pennsylvanias?
John: Oh, boy.
John: I don't know.
John: Because you've got Pittsburgh.
Merlin: I guess you could.
Merlin: I mean, if you want to get cute about it, if you had extra spots, I wouldn't waste them on this.
Merlin: But I guess you could say the Philadelphia part, the Pittsburgh part, and the rest.
Merlin: Now, in 1978, pre-Allentown, people would have had probably a real different idea about what you're going to do with them parts of Pennsylvania.
Yeah.
Merlin: This is a very interesting idea.
Merlin: You know what, John?
Merlin: I'm going to say, not even if you're in accelerated class.
Merlin: I think if you're in fifth grade, this should be a class for the entire year.
Merlin: Let's talk about if we were going to, within certain constraints, because you don't want to get cute about it, you don't want to Kobayashi Maru the shit, but you could say within certain constraints, how many states should there be?
Merlin: How should it be split up?
Merlin: Let's do this.
Merlin: Over this year, we will discuss six different ways we could choose to reorganize the United States arbitrarily.
Merlin: Go.
Merlin: Go.
Merlin: That would be so much more interesting than doing, like, Indian burial grounds and, you know, paper mache maps of Ohio.
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John: It's a Randall Monroe thing, I think.
John: Love that guy.
John: Randall Monroe, you know, he sits and does this type of thing all the time.
John: And I think people, and I get a kick out of it.
John: He's so smart.
John: One of the things that I always try and figure out is, I don't know.
John: I've never been to Australia.
John: I don't know anything about it.
John: Right.
John: I mean, that's not true.
John: I know some things about it.
John: But when people ask me about the geography of Australia...
Merlin: Talk about an extreme example of some cities.
John: There's the one.
John: There's the other.
John: It's like the north is the south.
John: Up there, it's hot.
John: It's really hot.
John: Sydney got Adelaide.
John: New Zealand is actually underneath it.
John: It's not over to the side.
John: It's like kind of down and, you know, it's like back into the left.
Merlin: Yeah, but New Zealand's like a little hard body.
Merlin: That's a very cool—I loved visiting there.
John: But it's two.
John: It's two.
John: There's two New Zealands.
John: There's the one and then there's the other.
John: Yeah, it's two Zealands.
John: Molokai is an example of an island that—
John: It's very complicated to try and describe.
Merlin: I'm looking at a map.
Merlin: It looks like a fairly inhabited-ish area in the northern and more eastern section.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: It's very mountainous.
Merlin: I'm seeing a lot of what look like roads here.
John: Those are ghost roads.
John: Those are not...
John: What you would call roads.
John: In fact, most of those roads that look like the grid of a city.
John: Farms.
John: Those farms are abandoned.
John: Uh-huh.
John: And those roads are rutted.
John: Okay.
John: You need to be in a four-wheel drive truck to go through them.
Merlin: Huolewa looks like maybe.
Merlin: Well, don't tell me because I don't want to compromise your upset.
Merlin: Can you tell me roughly what part of the island you are on?
John: So Kanakakai is the big town.
John: Okay.
John: And Kanakakai has a population of about 1,000.
Okay.
John: Oh, man.
John: The entire island has a population of 7,000 people.
John: The entire island of Molokai?
John: Yes.
John: Are you kidding me?
John: 7,000 people.
John: Oh, my gosh.
John: Now, Oahu, which is right next door, has, what, over a million, a million and a half, two million people?
John: Something like that.
John: Molokai.
John: has 7,000 people over the entire island, and that includes the people with Hanson's visit.
John: Jiminy Christmas.
John: So the experience of being on Molokai is unlike... I mean, it's Hawaii, so it feels like Hawaii, and you're very definitely in...
John: hawaii and the people are hawaiian so they got they got morning roosters there uh there are roosters but not morning roosters not like they're not it's not you get night roosters it's not no there's night night lizards but no night rooster we had a lot of on in kawaii we're in the like very northern part slightly eastern but there's like this one little kind of area there were so many morning roosters and so many feral cats a lot of feral cats
John: I never saw a single cat on this island.
Merlin: Where did your uncle live?
John: What island was he on?
John: Maui.
John: Maui, okay.
John: And Maui's the island I've probably spent the most time on.
John: But this, I was staying, so I was staying in a place on the far eastern edge of
John: Is that right?
John: The far eastern edge.
John: Yeah.
John: No, I was on the far western edge.
John: I'm sorry.
John: In a complex that is basically an abandoned hotel and golf course.
John: And you think that I'm kidding, but it's called the Kaluakoi Villas.
John: Okay.
John: And it was a giant and super awesome 70s style hotel complex.
Merlin: And to look at it... Like a Mel Brooks of the Marriott style modern thing?
Merlin: Or like an old school renovated thing?
John: No, it's like they built it completely out of a whole cloth.
John: But what it looks like is... It looks like a 70s version of a Hawaiian village.
John: So it's got peaked roof kind of... I mean, it honestly couldn't look more like a 1979...
John: idyllic kind of golf course hotel with a, with a swimming pool that looks like a, like some kind of four lobed, you know, it's like a, it's like one of those swimming pools that, that they invented skateboarding in.
John: It's got, it sits on a cliff overlooking these beautiful beaches with the ocean crashing over the rocks.
John: And at some point,
John: What happened was half the island of Molokai was a giant ranch dating all the way back to when there was a king of Hawaii.
John: And the ranch went through multiple permutations over the years.
John: It was a cattle ranch.
John: They grew sugar cane and they grew pineapples and all of those industries kind of one by one.
John: Like, when I was a kid, they grew so many pineapples and so much sugar cane on Hawaii, and then it just became easier to do that in Asia and Latin America, and the market dried up.
Merlin: I can't help it.
Merlin: I know I've said this at least four times to you, but something that was a constant... This sounds silly, but you and I grew up in the 70s.
Merlin: We watched TV.
Merlin: Something that was a constant presence for me, especially in ads for places like Sears, was a phrase that they would often say, but you would always see...
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Prices differ, something like prices differ in Alaska and Hawaii.
John: Oh, Alaska and Hawaii, right.
John: And also showtimes, the TV shows would air at different times, Alaska and Hawaii.
Merlin: But that's something you spent time growing up with in Alaska.
Merlin: And that's not an inconsequential fact about those two most recent states.
Yeah.
Merlin: The getting stuff, the supply chain type stuff must have been really complicated in Molokai compared to... It's not a must have been.
John: It's a thing that's still true.
John: There are only, by my count, four grocery stores in Molokai.
John: And none of them are what you would think of as...
John: recognize as like a, like a, it's none of them would be a growth.
John: I mean, the biggest one would be a grocery store in your neighborhood in
Merlin: san francisco and it wouldn't be the store that you went to closer closer to like the way we would think of maybe like a general store or a even like a like a grocery at a resort as against say like a super walmart either they might have a fishing net back there somewhere but you're probably not going to get exactly the pokemon that you want most of the stuff in at least two of the stores most of the stuff for sale still has its costco price tag on it and then there's another price tag put over it yeah yeah
Merlin: You pick up your Dasani you love so much.
John: But it's really interesting because, I mean, what happened was this resort got built.
John: Tell me again.
John: Would you mind telling me again what the name of it is?
John: So it's called the Kaluakoi Resort.
John: If you Google it, the whole story will be revealed just in the first few pictures.
John: Oh, never mind.
John: I'll close it.
John: I don't want to be surprised.
John: Okay.
John: And they built it with a golf course and everything, but it was built as part of the...
John: The ownership of this giant ranch transferred hands several times until it was basically owned by a succession of corporations that tried to develop it as first a luxury resort and then home sites for millionaires and billionaires, as is true in every direction.
John: But Molokai had a couple of things that made it difficult.
John: There's not a lot of water on the island.
John: And also...
John: The people of Molokai did not... Like, nobody in Hawaii, I don't think, wanted it to become an incredibly expensive vacation destination.
John: But it happened on Maui and it happened on Oahu in ways, you know, that kind of took everybody by surprise.
John: And it happened...
John: It was, you know, it was just a third wave of colonization.
Merlin: Yeah, I'm guessing that was not a, based on the reception, completely understandable reception, the frosty reception I received from every person who lived on that island, that that was probably not a bottom-up approach to say, hey, let's have this nice collective that we make into a hotel.
Merlin: It's probably more like big hotel companies or whomever, golf companies, like dive in and gobble up land.
Merlin: Was it more like that?
Yeah.
John: Well, it was, but, you know, Hawaiian culture was super duper hierarchical even before Europeans arrived, right?
John: It was always like the top 1% owned 99% of the land.
John: And so it was a situation kind of like India where the colonizer came in and just said, oh, well, that's great.
John: We're just going to be, we're the new top.
John: And then you guys just keep doing what you've been doing.
John: So, you know, it's the 90% that just starts to accrue up to us.
Merlin: Nothing else has to change about your hierarchy, except for the fact that there's a new, I mean, it's like, you know, like when it's like when Dean Wormer invents double secret probation, it's like nothing else has changed.
Merlin: It's just, there's an error area higher up that you don't need to worry about, but your hierarchy is going to be the same.
Merlin: No.
John: But in Molokai, that development didn't happen in the 60s and 70s because it was owned by this giant pineapple ranch.
John: And then when everything, when all of the economy fell away, it was late enough in the game that I think the Hawaiians of Molokai were like, wait a minute, we don't want this now to convert to
John: a millionaire billionaire resort.
John: And they actually like fought a resistance movement, like a, like a insurrection almost like they, they blew up the water pipes.
John: They tore down the street signs.
John: Wow.
John: And so this company that built this, this resort and, and believe me when this resort opened in 78 or whatever, 82, it would have been a killer place.
John: Um, um,
John: The company was trying to, you know, trying to expand and open up all these big, rich homes and complexes.
John: And the people of Molokai put up enough of a fight that the company was like, okay, you know what then?
John: We're just going to shut it all down.
Merlin: Like there were enough of a pain in the ass that this was not going to be the, I don't know if conquest is too strong of a word, the easy get that they thought it was going to be because of the friction that was being caused by people who actually live there.
John: And at this point,
John: Like a third of the island or a quarter of the island is owned by this company, but the company is big enough.
John: The pineapple company?
John: Well, I think it had transferred to some Indonesian property company and was now part of a global, you know, Monsanto, whatever I'm gonna call it.
John: And they were able to just take a, to just write off whatever the investment was and put up chains across all the roads that said no trespassing.
John: And they just closed.
John: They just closed 35% of the island.
John: And the resort just sat there like the swimming pool drained and they put plywood up over the windows.
John: They just pulled up stakes and that was it?
John: Gone.
John: Gone.
John: They were like, oh, you don't want us here?
John: You want to blow up our pipes or whatever?
John: Fine.
John: Goodbye.
John: And so there's no...
John: tourism industry for all intents and purposes on Molokai.
John: There's one hotel and it's a hotel that's like, that's a Magnum PI hotel.
John: That's got like, it was built in 69 and it's, and it feels like it was, it's still in 69.
John: And then everywhere else you go, it's like a, um, it's not, it doesn't quite feel like a, like a, like a reservation.
Um,
John: But it's definitely there's no money there.
John: And no industry there.
Merlin: But like, there's also just the thing of like, when you're not from somewhere and you arrive somewhere, there's like, if you, if you arrive in whether that's San Diego, San Francisco, or for that matter, Waikiki, there's going to be a lot of signage to indicate that you're welcome there.
Merlin: And like, here's, here's the places that you're welcome and where you can spend money and signage for all that kind of stuff.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: In that area, maybe less of that where it's like, Hmm, there's not, if you were just scanning the horizon, it would not be obvious, like where you would want to go and like try to get a,
Merlin: Motel room or is there a Stucky's, that kind of stuff?
Merlin: It feels like this is for local people.
John: There are signs on the road that say, visit, spend, leave.
John: That are just like staked in people's yards.
John: And there's maybe even a billboard that says it.
John: Not a billboard like you would see in California, but like a five by five sign or something that's on two by fours.
John: So it's, it's pretty explicit.
John: Um, they want, they want you to visit, but if, if you see the sign, you're already visiting.
John: So the visit part is like, right.
John: visit, spend, like, yes, although nothing really to buy or spend money on.
Merlin: Right.
John: And then leave.
Merlin: Well, what part of visit, spend, leave don't you understand, sir?
John: And I think the rest of Hawaii long ago kind of, I don't know, succumbed to the idea that there were going to be plenty of people that visited, spent, and stayed.
John: Right.
John: Or thought they would stay.
John: You know, they'd buy land and they'd turn it into something and then they'd sell it to somebody and so forth.
John: And this is visits been leave.
Merlin: This beautiful, clean country with your shiny suits and your oily hair.
Merlin: Oily hair.
Merlin: That's right.
John: And there's no, you know, there are a few restaurants, but very much catering to local people.
John: Like it's the one place in Hawaii that you can't get sushi, but also it's maybe the one place in America that
John: That doesn't have a Chinese restaurant or a Mexican restaurant or a Thai restaurant or an Italian restaurant.
John: Like there's no, if you wanted to go out for that.
John: No, if you wanted to go out on a, on a Saturday night, um, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna get a loco moco.
John: So I spent a couple of weeks there, and it was a lot of food for thought, really profound kind of wondering about Hawaii, which I have a lot of experience with.
John: And I'm always looking for aloha, and there's lots of aloha on Molokai, but it's in a very different direction.
John: It's in a different package.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: It may not be the aloha you want, but it might be the aloha you need.
Merlin: I don't.
John: Isn't that possible?
John: Yeah, I didn't find it was the aloha I needed either.
John: Well, yeah.
John: Yeah, you have to find aloha where you find it.
Merlin: Well, that was the whole point of the turtles.
Merlin: Am I wrong, John?
Merlin: I'm not trying to be contradictory, but the point of the turtles was, and you observing these little fellas, was that there's the sort of keening aloha that one wants, or there's the sort of aloha, whatever noun you want to put on this thing that could arrive for you is.
Merlin: Like, you...
Merlin: Like, for me, as an anxious person, the developing peace of mind is not going to come from the temporary satiety I get from new information.
Merlin: It comes from being someone who can let go of the concern that causes me to crave new information.
Merlin: Guess what, sir?
Merlin: You're soaking in it.
Merlin: Now you're in aloha.
Merlin: The aloha you thought you wanted in the past is not helping you.
Merlin: The one that this old turtle guy is going to show you in time could be what you need, but you're going to have to let go of that place, the mainland.
Merlin: And here, the aloha you will find is
Merlin: is going to be pure, the pure, uncut Molokai shit.
John: There isn't that, though.
John: I mean, there isn't pure, uncut Molokai shit because there's no escaping history in Molokai.
John: There are places, and this is true in Molokai that I've never, and I haven't seen since the 70s, there were places where I could stand on a beach in Molokai, a beautiful beach,
John: And see as far as you can see in any direction and see no other sign of human beings or, or habitation or development at all.
John: Like, like one of the longest beaches in the Americas.
John: I mean, there's, there are wonderful beaches in Brazil that are like 300 miles long, but like this was like a four mile long beach where there wasn't another soul.
John: Hmm.
Merlin: um the tallest sea cliffs in the world maybe i'm seeing some i'm i'm uh thinking about show art and i'm just looking at some photos of molokai and i'm i'm struck not not geographically by the like the vertical flatness of it but it does remind me almost of like dover or not calais yeah but like one of those beautiful european cliffs where you're like that's so beautifully impossibly high and these are very cliffy cliffs down to these gorgeous like small width beach but like you know it's an island it's got a lot of beach
John: Yeah, and a lot of, I mean, half of it is very dry, half of it's very wet.
John: But yeah, you're never far away from thoughts of war, right?
John: Violence and resistance and anger.
John: And that feeling of anger that you get when you go to places that have been
John: heavily colonized is like a, it's so, it's so palpable, even when you're not talking to anybody or confronting anybody, just standing in a place, you feel it.
John: You feel that, that, those waves.
John: And in other places in Hawaii, you can put your head under the water and the turtles are a prehistoric and you get, you're, you're in an environment where the Aloha is
John: is present and the anger is up, you know, it's, if you lift your head up above the water, it's there.
John: But in Molokai, it's always there because there's not the other stuff drowning it out, right?
John: There's not, but because when you're in Maui or you're in Oahu, there's also tremendous wealth that vibrates and distracts.
John: And also you feel as a middle-class person, oh, there's all that wealth and that's the them and they are the reason that everyone's so angry.
John: We do this a lot in the U.S., right?
John: You put yourself in a place where it's like, oh, it's not my fault.
John: It's the 1%.
John: It's the 10%.
John: It's them.
John: It's the rich.
John: They over there are the reason that the 80% over here are so mad.
John: And I'm in this special bubble of like, well, I'm partly complicit, but not really, you know?
John: And in Molokai, there is, I mean, one of the craziest things is there are big homes there.
John: There are people with $5 million homes that on Maui would be a $20 million home.
John: But if you had a $5 million... I thought about this a lot because I went to everywhere that you could go.
John: If you were a millionaire and you had bought a beachfront home in Molokai, you would have every week to ship your own food in.
John: You'd have to hire an airplane to buy...
John: fancy food or what you would think of as you know like normal food and fly it in and drive it across the island to your home because there would not be food available on the island in the stores that was at the level
John: that you were accustomed to.
John: Like if you, if you just shopped in the stores on Molokai, you'd be living in a $5 million house and you'd be eating reservation food, basically, you know, Costco.
John: Shave ice.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, no, there's no shave ice on Molokai.
John: There's no, there's an ice cream place.
John: Sounding more appealing.
John: But you can't, you know, there's no, there's none of that.
John: Like, Hey, welcome to Hawaii.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I get it.
John: No.
John: So yeah.
John: So, so Aloha was,
John: it's in the air, right?
John: It's in the water, but there's a different style of it.
John: You know, like, uh, visits, spend, leave.
John: That's much more acute because it's not, you can't turn your back on it or, you know, you can't then go into a, uh, a shave ice place where everybody's being nice and do a, do a black pearl on it.
John: So, yeah.
John: And then also, of course, living in an abandoned resort, uh,
John: really is i realized i kind of belong in a in an abandoned hotel it's sort of where i why do you say that i i just it just it's like post-apocalyptic but tropical which it's not it's not like the road where you're just out in in some windswept i mean it was windswept but i don't know i just uh
John: I love them.
Merlin: I bet that's a lot more affordable.
Merlin: I would do a search, go on Zillow.
Merlin: I don't think it's Zillow in Molokai, but maybe just go start, just search for any title for a property that includes the word abandoned in the title.
Merlin: No, you can buy it.
Merlin: Not teardown.
Merlin: Teardown's different.
Merlin: But abandoned, like I was watching what?
Merlin: Oh, God, Severance.
Merlin: And there's a guy who's like at one point living in a greenhouse, basically, like mostly outside of
Merlin: And, you know, or I think about, like, you know, in that game where the, in the, was it the Colossus game?
Merlin: Like, we're like, you know, just think of living in a temple.
Merlin: Like, big, open, abandoned vines.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Fountains that don't work.
John: Yeah, that's almost what this is.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And you can buy a studio or a one-bedroom condo in this complex where the beach is, like, right there.
John: Epic Hawaiian beach for a hundred years.
John: Studios in, like, a one-room plus a bathroom?
John: Yeah.
John: Or a one room kitchenette at the end bathroom.
John: That's plenty for me.
John: Yeah.
John: I'm a little guy.
John: I could totally live in that.
John: Or like a one bedroom where there's actually a bedroom in the back for $150,000.
John: Oh God.
John: $180,000.
John: And if you don't want to go to a restaurant or a movie or a anything, if what you want is to be in seclusion and have this natural beauty access to it,
John: And live a kind of at a subsistence level, you could be in paradise for it's like one of the last places in the world you could.
John: You would just have to navigate the sense of, like, I'm living in a ruin, and the reason it's a ruin is because the people don't want me here.
Merlin: If you're somebody who loves Hawaii, not the things the white people have built in Hawaii.
Merlin: Like, if you like, actually, that, what's the word I'm looking for?
Merlin: The, not obscurity, but, like, maybe the lonesomeness of that.
Merlin: Remoteness?
Merlin: Remoteness, sure, right?
Merlin: But you're saying it's like an apartment complex where people have bought units like that?
John: What I think happened, it's hard to get a straight story out of anybody, but what I think there was a guy, a British guy that was running the little bodega store inside the ruins of the old hotel.
John: He was like a British guy that had a bunch of tattoos that had faded into just looking like he'd spilled motor oil on his arms.
John: Hmm.
John: And, and you know, and he had a pair of glasses on top of his head and then another pair of glasses on and he, and the store was called the store and
John: And he was just, he was the one that was like, you know, he had those Costco muffins, but he had repriced them so that each one was $6.
John: The K and Kirkland into like a B. I was trying to get some of the story out of him and it was,
John: It was half hotel, half condo complex.
John: And when the hotel part closed, the people that owned the condos still lived there.
John: So the golf course gradually turned into grassland and then gradually turned into like scrubby trees and the remnants of the golf course, like the little roads for your golf carts and all the fairways.
John: They're all still there.
John: It's just they're all like prickly bush now.
John: And the people that lived in the condos were like, no, no, no, you're not closing down the condos.
John: And so half of the buildings still have people living in them and roofs, new roofs.
John: And they actually sued the company.
John: And said, you guys, if you read the bylaws, you're responsible for keeping the swimming pool clean because they'd let it go to shit and they won in Hawaiian court.
John: So this billion dollar company that owns this land that's let it just go to hell had to send a team back to get the swimming pool back.
John: So in the middle of this, there's this really awesome swimming pool right on the edge of a cliff looking out over the ocean.
John: Wow.
John: And then there's nobody in it.
John: It's just there and it's maintained.
John: So of course, you know, my daughter went there every day and was like, we swimming, swimming.
John: So it's, it's surreal.
John: It's surreal there.
John: And they just put the entire property for sale for $260 million, which is,
John: Seems like a rounding error for Larry Ellison.
John: All those Silicon Valley people are buying resorts on Lanai and infuriating people for buying millions and millions of acres.
John: Or not millions, but 10,000 acres or whatever.
John: It seems like $260 million.
John: There are so many... Even the guy from Snapchat could buy it.
John: But I think when they do their due diligence and they realize...
John: like what the vibe is nobody has yet i mean what should happen is the state of hawaii should buy it and return it to they should buy that third of the island give it back to the locals yeah or just turn it into a park i don't know what but it was a it was a head trip for me and especially just in the in the
John: in the way the world has been the last five or 10 years, all these ideas that we're, that we're chewing on all the time about identity and culture.
John: And, and, uh, it's like, this is a, this is a crazy little, little test case of it or Petri dish or whatever it is.
John: It's like, it's like a place where all that stuff is really, really out on the table.
John: And, um, and you know, I, I did not come away with,
John: with a clearer picture of anything or like I didn't come away going, aha, this is how it should be.
John: Um, or this is how it shouldn't be.
John: I, I just spent the whole time walking up and down the beach, kind of chewing on the side of my cheek going like, Hmm, wow.
John: What would you do?
John: How do you, what is the, you know, like I never, uh,
John: So that's a form of Aloha, right?
Merlin: Well, and I think that's proving my point that it's the Aloha that maybe I don't understand Aloha, but I feel, but I mean, to me, well, maybe it's, maybe it's not so different from thinking about the way that people, like if you've gotten into what we might call meditation, let's call it meditation, even though a lot of times they mean relaxation.
Merlin: If you've gotten into meditation for some kind of insight or a breakthrough, uh,
Merlin: you're not going to have a great time with it.
Merlin: If you've gotten into it for a practice of learning to sit with discomfort, you're going to be better off.
Merlin: So maybe you really should be going and getting a tape and doing relaxation instead of going after meditation because you're just going to drive yourself crazy because being bad at meditation is arguably the point of meditation.
Merlin: The point of aloha might be is that it's there...
Merlin: There's a lot of things with my kid over the years where I haven't bothered giving skeleton key level advice because my kid didn't have the ears to hear it yet.
Merlin: And even I, you know, who knows if I would get it across very well, but like there's some things that can't be taught in life.
Merlin: I don't mean that in the sense of like, oh, being an automobile mechanic, you got it or you don't.
Merlin: I just mean in the sense that there's some things in life where the experience is so heavily based in your experience of the cognition of realizing and learning something that I could tell you something a thousand times.
Merlin: Take something as dumb and cliche as measure twice, cut once.
Merlin: Measure twice cut once, which I learned from Bob Vila on public TV.
Merlin: And measure twice cut once, the grave, like the project management triangle, the grave existential truth of measure twice cut once is going to seem like a good idea until you realize what that really means.
Merlin: Until you realize it's not about a two by four.
Merlin: It's about like you...
Merlin: You didn't do whatever that situation was, like something terrible has happened that is now irreversible.
Merlin: And it's before you cut, before you measured at all.
Merlin: So that cliche did you no good because you did not accept its grave truth.
Merlin: And maybe in some ways that's what aloha is.
Merlin: I mean, that's why I'm saying like meditation, if you're thinking that meditation is a light switch that helps you turn off stress, that's...
Merlin: really going to get in your way because instead what it's going to be is that you're going to learn to be able to not get great at it necessarily but accept even just accepting that that feeling of being the wobbly wheel is the whole point of buddhism right for example that's just one kind of thing i'm just saying with aloha if you show up with the kind of aloha where you want like a 23 year old woman who pretend to like you while she puts flowers on you
Merlin: as you get off your KLA flight or whatever.
Merlin: Like, no, no, that's not what the aloha is.
Merlin: That's a certain kind of aloha that you might have printed at a science store, but it's not the kind of deeper thing that a John Roderick is looking for, it seems to me.
John: No, and I've never had aloha be a thing that made me, you know, I never came back with a head full of aloha and reorganized my kitchens.
John: Or, you know, or actually managed to banish anxiety or, you know, like it's always something that, that I come back with.
John: And then I, and then it's, you know, it's just a lot of food for thought.
John: And this is one that I didn't, I don't know how to vacation Merlin.
John: I don't know how to sit on a beach and relax.
John: It's always something right.
John: I'm always going to be, I'm always going to have my head under the water, like looking for something.
John: I think for the next year, I'm going to be thinking about Molokai and not fully understanding.
John: I guess part of it is, you know, watching the war in Ukraine and basically on Twitter, watching it on Twitter and reading all the threads of a thousand people all commenting on exactly what is happening and what should be happening and what NATO needs to do and what Ukraine should do.
John: And they're just all armchair experts out in the world.
John: And I guess having that feeling of like, coming back from Molokai and honestly, honest to God, I have no idea what I would recommend.
John: Right?
Merlin: Like, there's no... You mean in the sense of like, you come back and somebody says, oh, you know, what did you do there that we should do?
Merlin: That kind of thing?
John: Well, yeah.
John: If you look at Molokai and you feel the situation of it, and you kind of understand the ground rules of it,
John: And you think, you know, this is not its final form, right?
John: This is not, this cannot be for anyone living on Molokai.
John: This cannot be what they, what their, what their hope is.
John: Like this isn't Molokai in its power.
John: in its purest form.
John: There's a lot, it's a, it's, it's Molokai in a state of, of, of change.
John: It's a, you know, it's in a state, right.
John: Between places.
John: And normally in situations like that, my instinct is to have a plan, right?
John: I mean, if you want to, we could do a whole, we could do a five-year long program where I talk about Israel and Palestine.
John: Thank God we never have.
John: But, but I've got a plan, right?
John: I've got a plan for everything.
John: I've got a plan for my neighborhood.
John: I've got a plan for my next door neighbors.
John: Like what they should do is my, that's one of the things that, that, uh, that makes life interesting to me.
John: Like, I know what you should do.
Merlin: Yeah, you're practically a European philosopher in the sense of that kind of interest in, like, the connection between what some people call metaphysics and then the more, like, down on the human level, like, what should I be doing?
Merlin: What is a good life?
John: This would be a thing if you did this plus that.
John: You know, here's what you're missing.
John: And being on Molokai, it was so naked.
John: And I do not...
John: I do not know enough, but also I don't know if there's any one, I don't know if you could know enough to, to have a plan.
John: And so what that feels like is that what's going to happen to Molokai is out of their hands in a, in a weird way.
John: What's going to happen to Molokai is that there is no plan and it's going to just happen.
John: And, and that's,
John: And so I, you know, so I come off the island just going like, it feels like anything could happen, but that, but not, but not necessarily in a good way or in a hopeful way.
John: Like, like somebody is going to sell that to somebody and it's going to reset the clock on something.
John: And I'm going to, you know, so anyway, I think it's good that
John: to be confronted by things in the world where the only thing you can do is say there's no solution to this that i know of except for the passage of time and and maybe that's the thing i i can bring
John: to the rest of my life they're like this dispute with my neighbors ah interesting i see maybe take only photos leave only footprints but then you know the you know what if the aloha was actually waiting in your side yard you didn't know it i'm constantly in trouble because i'm looking for solutions and
John: And it's very hard for me not to think of everything as a thing that has a solution.
John: And I don't know.
John: That's so baked into me.
John: I'm struggling even to know how I could look at that directly.
John: You know, like I have to look at it through a mirror.
John: Right.
John: you know, kind of look at it like you look at a vampire or something.
Merlin: Oh, you're saying like the way that you'd look at a, like a, like a, what was this guy thing?
Merlin: Like a Gorgon or a Gorgon.
Merlin: You could use a shield like Perseus did.
Merlin: I was saying that like when you look at an eclipse, right?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: So, so yeah, I'm trying to little house, that little house out by the cliff house where you can go and the, what's called the camera obscura, that thing kind of like that.
John: You're saying you need a camera obscura to even see that.
John: that there's a way to live where you're not thinking of solutions as a as a now talk about a practice that's not a thing you're gonna that's not a thing you're gonna change in a long weekend that's that's gonna you get to study that right right as a lifestyle
John: Looking at everything as a problem because it's a joy to think of a solution.
John: Ooh, God.
John: Is just how I, that's what I do.
John: Every morning I put my belt on, I hike up my pants so you can see my socks, and I walk out of the door.
Merlin: That's a smart look.
John: And I go, who's got a problem?
John: You know what?
John: These streetlights should have been three meters taller.
Merlin: They call him John Solution.
Merlin: They used to call him the alphabet gun, but now they call him Johnny Solution.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
Merlin: I can't find my bell, but I would like you to congratulate me for remembering the name Perseus.
John: I was so impressed.
John: I was like, I just read Ovid a couple of years ago.
Merlin: I almost said Harry Hamlet.
Ding!
Merlin: Oh, God, I love that movie, Sir Lawrence Olivier.
John: Oh, boy.
John: It's been a long time since I saw that movie.
Merlin: Oh, God, it used to be on... It's so funny.
Merlin: When we lived with my stepfather, we had cable for certain times, and we didn't always have HBO.
Merlin: Sometimes we had HBO and Showtime.
John: I don't understand how... He let the cable...
John: go off sometimes?
Merlin: Well, I don't remember specifically how this worked.
Merlin: I remember that it was something like $40 a month for cable.
Merlin: Cable is one of those things that was almost always like $40.
Merlin: It was like a ridiculous amount of money for us.
Merlin: But anyhow, I want to say that it was on HBO or possibly Showtime.
Merlin: like all the time in 1981, 82.
Merlin: I remember it being one of the first movies.
Merlin: Burgess Meredith was in that movie.
Merlin: Oh, shit, he sure was.
Merlin: But seeing, it was one of the first movies when I was really getting into Siskel and Ebert on PBS.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I remember they did that.
Merlin: They did Return of the Secaucus 7.
Merlin: They did, there's just certain movies I so clearly remember being on, what was it?
Merlin: It was on PBS and then HBO or something?
Merlin: Anyway.
Merlin: Showtime?
Merlin: Perseus.
Merlin: I don't know where my, I cleaned my office and I don't know where my,
John: I was gonna show Marlo Clash of the Titans, and I guess I haven't.
John: It has not aged well.
John: It's got Ray Harryhausen shit.
Merlin: If she likes Ray Harryhausen, it's got some Harryhausen in it.
Merlin: I don't know what that is.
Merlin: Ray Harryhausen is the guy who did all the amazing stop motion in 60s movies, like in the Hercules movies where he fights the skeletons.
John: No, she's not into any of that.
John: Lately, she's been watching I Love Lucy.
John: And loving it.
Merlin: Like I hear her cracking up.
Merlin: It's so comforting.
John: It really is.
John: Every episode, Lucy's got a scheme.
John: She's got a scheme, Merlin.
John: Lucy, you can't sing.
John: You're not going to let you sing in the show.
John: Here's what's going to happen.
John: She's going to pretend that she fell down the stairs and has a cast so that Ricky.
Merlin: That's how they discovered once again Fred Mertz had killed a prostitute.
Merlin: Again.
Merlin: you