Hi everyone. I'm Josh, and this is The Emerald,

currents and trends through a mythic lens. The podcast where we explore an ever-changing world

and our lives in it through the lens of myth, story, and imagination.

The Emerald. All that's happening on this green jewel in space. The other day, as happened sometimes, I found myself at Walmart.

I mean, I went to Walmart. I didn't find myself in some larger sense at Walmart, but I found that I had to go to Walmart

to get some things that I couldn't find anywhere else. So yeah, I'm in Walmart. I'm wandering the aisles

of late capitalist Detroitus. And, you know, it's a typical Walmart scene, humanity teetering on the brink,

drowning in aisles upon aisles of its own

plastic chotch, people wandering with glazed eyes under the fluorescent glare, filling

shopping carts with more and more and more stuff, that kind of scene. And the sound system is

blaring, this is the good life by one republic walmart pandemic you know this is the good

life sounds reasonable i've been wanting to be good a lot, good life.

I've been wanting to do an episode on reason for a while now, and then it hit me.

Walmart is the perfect example of what I want to say about reason.

Because if you look at it in one way, Walmart is the very epitome of reason.

It's reasonable that we would want a one-stop destination for all of our daily household needs and that this one-stop destination would be

organized in a way designed to make the experience of being there convenient and efficient.

The parking lot is a big rectangle cut into individual spaces for each of our cars to maximize space and efficiency.

The building itself is laid out in a big grid of aisles, and each aisle is organized by an area of the house, right?

So you could find things for your kitchen here, and then things for your living room here, and then things for your garden here, and things for your living room here and then things for your garden here

and things for your bathroom and your pantry and storage containers in the storage section

and entertainment in the entertainment section everything is neatly rationally organized and each

...