WEBVTT
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[bell rings]
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This idea of the perfect wave
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has been lodged the middle of one's brain
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for a long long time.
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When I was a kid, The Endless Summer was really influential.
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It was about two surfers from California
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who travel around the globe looking for waves,
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and they find the perfect wave in South Africa.
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They show this beautiful beautiful little wave
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just reeling down along the rocks.
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He knew he'd finally found that perfect wave.
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The narrator saying these waves
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look like they've been made by some kind of machine.
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But there is no such things as a perfect wave in the ocean.
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In nature, a wave is this kinda complex, violent event.
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[wave crashing]
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I ask people sometimes,
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have you ever heard of a guy called Kelly Slater?
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And just around New York,
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people who might read The New Yorker,
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and they routinely say no.
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They've never heard his name, they don't know who he is,
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which it funny to me because within surfing
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he's such a big deal.
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He was the youngest ever world champion
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and he was the oldest ever world champion at 39,
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11 world titles.
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He's just absolutely dominant.
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Consensus, best surfer in history,
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but just as important as what he does is how he thinks,
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which includes how he thinks about waves.
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He's just got a very very advanced understanding,
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but he has given away that advantage with this pool.
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In a 2003 memoir,
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he was talking about the ultimate wave machine
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and how it could bring surfing to every town in America,
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make it mainstream like soccer.
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It just seemed like a sort of idle fantasy,
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but it wasn't that idle.
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He went to The University of Southern California
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trying to find scientists,
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and he ended up with a guy named Adam Finchum,
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and Finchum, who's specializing in fluid dynamics,
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loves a challenge and he just took it on.
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To get the wave that Slater had in mind,
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his first idea was a kinda donut shaped lake,
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a wave that just went and went and went.
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In the end, they ended up with a rectangular model,
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a single wave that just propagates and doesn't lose energy.
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He came up with this hydrofoil shape,
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just pushing water sideways.
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Apparently it's very very complex.
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Horrendous mathematics is how one guy described it,
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but they cracked it.
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It's a lot of pressure
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working on something for 10 years,
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and then I think it's a big thing for surfing.
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They dropped this video in December 2015
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called Kelly's Wave.
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[cheering]
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Oh my god.
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He starts jumping up and down.
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I mean, you've never seen anything like it.
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This is the best manmade wave ever made, for sure.
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Beautiful, beautiful wave.
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It's so, I mean, it's entry-level surrealism, right?
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This wave in the middle of farm country.
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[rooster crowing]
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You come in at a certain point,
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suddenly you can see the wave.
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You can't be prepared for seeing this thing
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in the middle of fields,
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and it's in a pool that's 700 yards long,
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100 yards plus wide.
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It's this patch of ocean, Ersatz Ocean,
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and the waves created by this huge thing
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they called a vehicle is this big sort of Mad Max-y machine.
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It's up on rails, it's three train cars,
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and it kind of whips down these rails on 150 truck tires
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and it has, on the side of it, the key part,
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is this huge, I think it's 100 tons,
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this iron blade kind of the size and shape
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of an airplane wing, which is called a hydrofoil.
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And it pushes this wave out they call a soliton,
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it's just a solitary wave.
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The bottom of the pond is contoured in such a way
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that it makes the wave break like an ocean wave
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in a certain pattern.
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I mean, there are a lot of wave pools around.
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They've been around for 50 years or more.
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There have been lots of commercial efforts
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to make surfing waves,
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but this thing that Slater and his team came up with
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is of a completely different order.
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I mean, it's like the best wave
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you've ever seen in your life.
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Matt Warshaw who's kind of
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the unofficial historian of surfing,
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he says that surfing now has two eras,
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before Kelly's wave and after Kelly's wave.
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This has changed everything.
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Technology has outdone nature
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and the consequences are gonna be with us forever.
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On the pro tour,
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everybody goes and hangs out in Tahiti
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waiting for the spot to get good, and then you surf.
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With this wave machine,
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you can schedule a contest and you can put it on TV.
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They'll be a wave every three minutes
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and they can show replays and commercials in between.
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I was there in September for the first pro contest.
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Slater said that he thought it was a pure test
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of people's skills.
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You could really see what he called
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the depth of people's surfing,
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and he said the cream rises to the top in this situation.
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All the stuff in the wave,
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how you could turn, how you could get in the barrel.
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Another opportunity in the tube.
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There was a kind of sameness to it,
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and I guess it was something to Slater's point that
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any kind of hitch or flaw in your surfing
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just came up in bold relief
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because there was no variation in the wave.
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As surfers, we spend a huge amount of our time
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looking for good waves, trying to find a great wave.
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It becomes very much about that search,
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and then I'll figure out what to do with it
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when you find it,
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and all the mediocre waves you ride in the interim.
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And this kind of eliminates all that.
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You can just jump ahead to nirvana,
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this incredibly perfect wave.
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Just push a button and it comes out.
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So, all the reaction was mixed.
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Everybody, everybody who saw this wave
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was just aching to ride it.
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I mean, that was an involuntary response,
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and I was there as a reporter.
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I'm supposed to be the, you know, interviewing people,
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paying attention, being objective in some sense,
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and I was just...
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I couldn't take my eyes off this wave.
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It's like it's built to reduce you to this needy,
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turned on, desperate character.
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Slater came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder
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and said 408 or 608?
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And I knew as a reporter I shouldn't be taking this freebie,
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I should decline, and instead I just said 608.
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So, I ended up surfing it.
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Just a couple of waves.
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It was not the sort of religious experience one hopes for.
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It really is quite hectic.
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Get ready, get ready,
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and there's a buzzer saying one minute
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and you don't paddle out,
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you don't catch a few inside waves,
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figure out where you wanna sit, any of that stuff.
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It's just bang, you're in the apex of one of the best waves
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you'll probably ever surf in your life.
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I was talking to Stephanie Gilmore,
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the number one in the world at the moment,
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and I said can you picture some kid
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who just learns in a wave pool,
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but has this perfect wave at his disposal
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and just becomes unimaginably skilled,
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becomes a world champion because they trained
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on this incredible wave.
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And she said yeah,
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and then they paddle out at pipeline and drown.
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And we both laughed.
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Why are we laughing at the idea of somebody drowning?
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There's this side of surfing,
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which is you gotta earn your stipes,
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you've gotta be able to deal with danger
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and fear and punishment of various kinds,
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and you haven't paid your dues, don't paddle out here.
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Slater is a little conflicted about what he's done.
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I've heard him say have I created a monster here?
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He acknowledges that this thing
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is very much a product of the human obsession,
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the human desire, to control things.
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Playing god.
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[intense music]