Transcripts For CSPAN3 Abraham 20240704

Today we are lucky to feature josephine. Her writing has been featured vulture, vice and slate, among other places, covering such subjects southland tales. The book of joe and love and rockets, the famous comic series. Her book believer the rise and fall of stanley told the story of marvels most famous film cameo, from early success to a sad and sordid end. Now, in her new book, ringmaster where she asks the question, do we live in a world that instant mayhem created . If so, who is affected and why. Joining her in conversation is jeff jess keefe, the of 30,000 steps, a memoir in of sprinting toward life after loss. Keith has written articles for teen vogue runners world and book brooklyn magazine, among others. She has alongside ngos to sing to the stigmatize the addiction and increase the availability of medication early naloxone. Here is josephine reesman and jess keefe. Hi everybody. Heres how you know its real is when have two microphones. Yeah. The first time Vince Mcmahon did a bad guy appearance was in memphis. Not for his own company. It was for this other company. And in the video clip that survives, him doing his first little monologue where hes trying to antagonize an audience, hes two microphones. Its a very odd. There was like one for the tv camera and one for the p. A. System, one for vince and one for mr. Mcmahon. Yeah. Or that that could be a two. Exactly. Sorry i didnt even let you ask a question. Thank you all for being here. Im delighted to be here with jose as well. This book is amazing and im excited. Get into it. Are you ready to get into it . I was born ready. Lets do it. Cool. So i loved this book. It is a very vivid and colorful story. In addition to being a fascinating, look at sort of the late stage post reality that we kind of live in now. But so before we kind of get into those deeper themes, i as a memory, im always interested in the author and still so i wanted to ask you when did wrestling come on your radar as an as a child. So had to do the math on that myself once i of found out about the timeline, historical events and wrestling, i could figure out that im pretty sure i first saw wrestling when i was six years old, which would been around 1990 or so, 1991. And it was late stage hulkamania hulk hogan had very popular in the 1980s especially in the mid 1980s, and he was on the wane. But i had never seen him before, or if i maybe i had of him, i dont know. I was six and a vivid memory of what i knew, what my epistemology was. But i saw him rip his shirt off. You know, this is what the hulkster used to do. He would take his t shirt and just use his big old biceps, just rip it open, and then toss it away and. I thought that was the coolest thing id ever seen on television and i went to my mom and i said, i would like to get a tear away tshirt thinking that that was a kind of right. Sure. Sure. Thats right. And thats what hes using hes using in an everyday tearaway t shirt. Yeah. And mom, this book is dedicated to my mom because god bless her instead of saying, child, go watch pbs, she said, okay. And she took one of my little kid t shirts, kind of split down the middle, got it started and put in little holes in our side, put shoestrings in. So i could sort of go g and like pull it open wasnt exactly ripping it open and it off, but then you could polish strings. And so it was, it was reusable. I wish, i still had that shirt. Thats cool. I was from so long ago. I have no idea what happened to it but that was my but the weird thing was it didnt really stick with i remember that vividly. Yeah but i did not become regular watcher of wrestling until much later. That was would have been when i was about 1313 and a half which the spring of 1999. Yeah i had actually really resisted wrestling. And despite its ubiquity in, the playgrounds of my millennial used to, because my bullies loved wrestling, they were all jerks to me and. You know, i wrote an essay about this for polygon. Theres a special kind of humiliation in being gay bashed by somebody wearing a t shirt that says, suck it, you know . Which was one of the slogans of wwf at the time. It was the the the group dgeneration x, their slogan was, you know, ive got two words for you suck it. And there was something so sexually confusing about all of that yes. And that was when i really i got into it because my best friend brian who did have good taste, didnt bully me except when i deserved it. He was just flipping channels, as one did back in the day and saw something crazy on. Wwf television. And he doesnt what it was. I checked with him. I was like how did you get interested and goes i was flipping and i saw something unbelievable. I wish i could remember what it was, but i remember thinking. You cant. What . You cant put that on and that unfortunately does not narrow it down. Like 1999 wwf that really could have been any number of things. Yeah, but in the early, early months of 1989, he said, you got to check this out. So i gave it a shot and i became an addict and until about late 2001. Wrestling was huge part of my diet philosophy. My conception of what it meant to be a boy, a man which were things i thought i was back and was aspiring to be and yeah we can talk about any and all of that. Yeah, theres my god. Theres so much in there that i. Yes, but that was my entree. Yes. So i feel like we are definitely we came up at the same time. I. Have a very vivid memory of my where labor say me and i had like a neighborhood friend who was very much into hulk hogan as well. And when i came, we had the two most nineties interests which were the Chicago Bulls and hulk hogan. Yeah. Interesting. Hulk hogan even as well. Yeah. A wcw fan. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was like we were pretty young, but like, we would go over there and like play with Action Figures right . Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hogan, i didnt really. I thats the thing about wrestling is even youre not a fan, so ubiquitous its yeah it bleeds out into the culture and that was true before Vince Mcmahon yeah but it happens in the Vince Mcmahon era in a different where like you have wrestlers who are cool or at least think cool but even before that even before wrestling was cool and involved mainstream hipness. You know like i remember talking to my dad when i got this book, my dad, who is not a wrestling fan, not like he hates wrestling. Like its not, you know, no one would ever identify him as a wrestling fan. He hasnt watched it. But well, that and i started doing this book. He oh, yeah. Oh man. I used to remember seeing Bruno Sammartino at the garden and i was like, are you kidding me . And hes like. Yeah, like, you were a wrestling fan. Hes like, no, you just i dont know, my, my dad took me to we were, you know, he grew up in providence and his dad would like drive into boston and theyd see wrestling. And that happened to have been the wrestling Vince Mcmahons dad was producing. So but the point was like wrestling bleeds out into the culture and always has. Yeah, totally. And i feel like it was. I loved how right away in the book we get into this concept of kayfabe, which well talk about. No, yeah, i talk about that all day. Im remember very vividly like my cultural awareness of wrestling really revolved around the big is it real discussion right and how much of that like i wanted to ask you as a as a young fan and you say interestingly in the book, theres bit about, you know, how how much people were really actually thinking it was real or how much they were kind of just like deferring to. Right. Right. So how so . As a young wrestling fan, i do think it was this is one of the great mysteries, my life. I know, i knew that it wasnt all on the level. Sure. But i genuinely cannot reconstruct in my head what my theory of reality was for wrestling. And heres the thing. Im not alone in that room. You look back on your wrestling. Watch chain. I think most wrestling watchers can tell you this. You look back and you go, oh, yeah what did i believe . Because thats not necessarily a turn off, right . If youre confused. In fact, i would argue the confusion is what keeps you coming back, whether realize that or not that effort to sort what seeing into fact or fiction at least as of the turn of the millennium when wrestling was going really hard on messing with reality. Yes. And that was really hard to look away from just because you were like im so baffled that i my mind wants to focus on this, try to sort it out right. And then in the later days of after, weve all seem to as a culture agree that it is not real. This sort of still goes on though. Well, i mean, even by the time i was watching, it was known to be not right that was the weird thing. Yeah. Ten years prior, in 1989, the New York Times had run a story about Vince Mcmahons deregulation effort for wrestling in new jersey and. The headline on page one was was now it can be told these wrestlers are just having fun and. It was february 1989. It was the end of the old kayfabe cold. They had the code the old code that said you know everything that see in the ring is real. That was done then. Thats 1989. Im watching in 1999. That has been known Public Information for ten years. And i still not tell you what i thought were fake because. I was so caught up in it that i dont that mattered to me, right . It didnt seem like it mattered to most people i know part. Oh and like theres some comfort in knowing that its fake because you even you dont know the terms of the fakeness it allows you to watch the violence not recoil. Yeah, because you can go oh well is this fake . And they still always manage to talk about this a little bit as it moves, as we move forward in time, they still always manage to place little nuggets in your head of like. But too, i mean right, right is fake. But these two guys like really do hate. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. You know, there was this incident in 1997, the socalled screwjob where something that at least for most of the people who witnessed it or were involved in it like not expected scripted something for lack of a better term real happened and the entire every viewer of wrestling on some level whether admit it or not is still chasing the high of that time when reality broke through and. You can really tease people with stuff that feels and make them at least. Well, maybe. Yeah, you know, thats the fun. Thats the fun i know. And no other art form other reality tv and. The art of the the art oeuvre of taylor swift really does that on level. Oh, that is true. No, but taylor swift, its the exact same thing. Its doc favorites the gods of the come up with where like you have this false sense that youre seeing behind the curtain. Yeah. And truth is you can stay in character behind the curtain and just be indifferent kind of character, right . Its still a lie, you know, but people because they think theyve seen something beyond the veil, they get excited and think, i know the whole truth. Yes. And thats like you see with t swift fandom or Vanderpump Rules or john cena, you whatever. Yes. Yeah, thats wild. I mean, russell, i mean, so another thing i want to ask is in talking about the performance element of of of wrestling, the book, does such amazing job of really putting you in these scenes that are unfolding and raw, all the various, you know, wrestling programs. I wanted to know because you describe it so vividly, like, do you remember any scenes specifically when you like when you were a young fan like and did anything surprise you when you were rewatched it and re researching it this time . Was there anything like this, this, this image even . I had a moment where i looked at and was like, oh, this image is etched in my mind. Theres a reason the last chat, theres an epilog after this, but theres a reason is the last image after. You finish the last chapter and a reason why the text of the last chapter ends with just describing image. Because it is for me. The seminal moment of my fascination. Vince mcmahon, which led us to this book totally. I remember on and it was june, i believe, six. I might be getting the exact date wrong. 1999 bostons fleetcenter. I was watching from home in chicago, illinois and, oak park, illinois, and i remember the end of this long storyline about who is the greater power or who is this villain who is so villainous that hes been torturing Vince Mcmahon, even evil Vince Mcmahon pales this greater power. The power order is the wrestler, the undertaker to do unholy things like threaten to and almost rape mcmahons daughter like really rough stuff and theyve been trying build up like who is the greater power . Who is the greater power . And long story short, they like the week before they announced to because they didnt actually have a plan of who the greater power was going to be they. Well nobody made sense than vince even that didnt make sense. It made the lead. It made wrestling sense. Yes. Because who is a greater power than Vince Mcmahon . Who is the only person more diabolical in the world of wrestling than vincent . Vince mcmahon. Like i mean, its just theres there were more importantly greater power. There is a greater power. You will now we have ari emanuel. But prior to, there had never been a greater power than vince. So it was just it was perfect. And seeing him come out in this, you know, hooded robe and then in a moment of revelation and whip it back, the hood and show his face in that image, i showed you, ill never forget it. Wow. Especially because i had just started watching while Vince Mcmahon was good guy. And there was this brief period where while he was getting tortured, the greater power they were trying to go, hey maybe this isnt so bad. And like vince is sort of being portrayed as a sympathetic guy that was when i came in to start watching Something Like, yeah, wow, i know this man seems like a nice business man. Maybe hes a little tough as nails, but he gets the job done. And then you reveal that he like arranged Sexual Assault of his own daughter. And i was like, who is this monster . And i guess this book is like in some ways an attempt to try and deconstruct the character that he was playing in that. Yeah. And to figure out who that character was based and where it came from. Yeah. Speaking of entities that were once sort of, you know, considered to be good guys and now maybe thats not so clear theres a very theres a big allegory in the book about the states of america. Yeah. The world, the environment that we all live in as well as know the political figures and, you know, its very easy to see how wrestling and the the drama of it all, as well as the violence of it all connects this other thing. I thought that that was really interesting that figure was that on your mind when you. Oh, god. Yes. Right yeah. I wrote the proposal for this book in, i believe april, april of 20. I first had the idea in a conversation with my spouse the wonderful journalist and editor as i rosenbaum wed been just brainstorming ideas what to do for book two. And one of us said Vince Mcmahon can remember which one of us it was. But then i came back to the idea, and that was about february 20th, 2020. And then a lot of stuff happened and ultimately i found myself locked in my little apartment in brooklyn with then fiancee and. We had three cats and, a lot of panic and anxiety, and i poured all of that into this book proposal. Yeah, i just went. Im so mad and scared about where this country went. And i want this book to be an attempt not to find the reason, because theres no one reason but to trace this one line of dom knows that has not been traced before, which is the prowrestling connection to trump and the Pro Wrestling connection to just the broader culture. And i didnt want it to be screw Pro Wrestling by any means. I love Pro Wrestling. Its a beautiful art form. Art form, great industry, abhorrent. Sure. Yeah. You know, and thats not comes across right thats not you need wrestling of course you know i wrote the last book was about the comic book industry which some like comics great medium unforgivable industry they have a lot of the same traits in that theyre in their unforgiving ability. But yes, yes. And speaking of perfect the portrayal of trump, i feel like the book is really interesting i think to me he comes across as almost a little daffy and this kind of was me and it was trump daffy boy, i guess. Oh, you know, its like we live in this world where trump is what he is now and its oh, its always funny to remember, know, oh yeah, hes strong. I just sort dislike not just eighties trump i am proud to say this as fifties trump wow because we have a flashback to one, you know, one of Donald Trumps childhood went on the record saying, you know, when we were growing up in queens. Yes, little would watch wrestling with us. And there was a wrestler named anton nino and he to he just thought the guys name was rocky anthony. Now and he would refuse to call against nino rocca that. He would only call him rocky anthony. You know. And so theres this quote of him talking about that and you do the math and youre like, well, he was watching Mcmahon Family wrestling because in queens, rocky, rocky. And im doing it now. Anthony rocca was one of mcmahon seen, his wrestlers, his star, donald has been a wrestling head since he was a child. Yeah yeah, he was in Single Digits age. The way he comes across the times we see him, you know, talking about Atlantic City and talking about is this one of my fears, right . He was like, what an honor it was. Yeah, he was very deferential, which i thought was very to spence and. Yes. And wrestling. He loves wrestling. Yes, i was. Yeah, that was interesting. And also another very funny. Theres a lot of like very deadpan humor i found in the book. And this moment, trump genuinely somebody right after, oh, i didnt want to read too much into the Single Source story, sure. But triple h, vince son in law didnt a number of years ago where he said that night or the morning after, a nighttime show where Vince Mcmahon had faked his death as a character on the program, trump called up wwe and said, hey, is vince okay. So this i know you want to believe. Yeah mean i mean i guess i saw it from like a writer perspective, right . Like i felt like you made a lot of really deliberate choices about how to portray trump in the book. And i had to hes hes the hes the elephant in the room but you dont want it to just be about him. Yeah. Yeah, it felt very deliberate. And i and also felt very restrained, which i appreciate. Like, i feel like. Thank you. Yeah. So i. Yeah, i wonder how. Yeah, i mean, youve already talked about a few of your thoughts on like. Yeah, you know, i mean its like its hes become such a larger than life figure and especially now was it difficult to get that place where you could include him with a light touch and trust your reader . Yes, i know the way what youre trying to tell. Yeah. My the key there was my spouse like my c rosenbaum god bless her. I wrote i had a very strict word count this book because they did not want me trying to reach mainstream readers. A phone book sized book about wrestling. You need to have it be at this sweet spot where people can go. Thats long enough that ill learn something but short enough that i might actually finish it and. Thats what you want for people who are exploring a topic they dont know anything about, or ive heard bad things about. So i was writing it and i basically reached by word count and was only up to 1990 and that was a problem. And i started freaking out and my spouse who had previously been trying to sort of stay hands off because we were like, oh, this is going to work know if we try to mix, mix, mix, business and pleasure and but, but i let her take a look. I was like, no, im really freaking out. This is not going to work. Was like, no, im sure itll be fine, but let me take a look. And shes like, you are, right . This man has had too much life to fit into your word count because this book was supposed to be about entire life. The finished book, the last chapter. Theres a robust that takes us up to almost the present. But the last chapter ends in 1999 because we had the and a that was one change that happened as a result of my spouse then jumping on as an editor but beyond that her lesson to me just a shorter paragraphs and you know anyone who reads true believer my previous book and then reads will notice that i learned paragraph can be short and the other was confidence that if you just to the facts of the narrative the narrative is compelling that the audience will get what youre trying to imply you dont have to beat them over the head with it because like the first draft of that thing that went up to 1990, there was a lot of excess prose of like and can believe. Yeah, even worse. I mean you have to like youre youre probably because thats the thing is like anyone and anyone who reads this book unless youre a long time jaded wrestling and even then i think anyone who reads this book will have moments where youre going to look whats and where and kept having these moments where i was writing moments and going, i feel like i need to draw attention because like right, this is crazy that this happened and. My spouse is just like you just have to trust that theyre going, yeah, theyre going to think the same thing. And i dont know, maybe not everybody does, but enough people have. Yeah, totally. I think that thats really editorial guidance as well. You know, its also to as a writer like when youre writing about something that youre really flamed up about, its you really want to can you you know i get flamed up you got to get that out of your system and then someone can help you take it out. But yeah, it really does. Like i really appreciated the, the, the way presented because i felt like it really was putting in my hands to interpret whats happened. Yeah. And im not going to call anybody out, but theres somebody, the audience gave me great advice early on when i was writing that early version, which was i said something along the lines of like, well, you i kind of want to explain how trump led to, you know, wrestling led to trump and this person was like, please, god, dont do that. And that was great advice was to not think of it that way. And i didnt its a political book, but its not how wrestling gave us. Trump no, its how wrestling offers a lens through which american makes more sense and through which we can start to understand the things that dont work as strategies against american fascism, such as fact checking. If were saying youre evil, those two things are completely ineffectual or youre a hypocrite you contradicted yourself, right . When truth is not a factor or oh, same are taken off the table, then you can get away with anything. Theres nothing you in america. Yeah, thats the genius of it too. And i want to talk. Well, hold on. First, i want to talk about, as you were kind of saying for like those moments where, i find myself being like, what . Like i would be hollering to corey, my husband and other i would be like, did know. Thank you so much. Did you know about Saddam Hussein . Like, i know his mom said release Saddam Hussein. And it was also him, you know, presenting these sort of tyrants like like trump and hussein they as sort of these like really like starry eyed marks. I know. Leaning on on all cases memoir on the no case being the most famous wrestler to ever emerge from iraq. Reading his memoir was one of the weirdest experiences of my life. And interviewing was even weirder because his he does have story about a lot of stories about being a wrestler in Baathist Iraq early in saddams and saddam like i love this wrestling stuff. Its great. Its great. Its totally youre a really strong guy. You can beat them all, bring people in and like what adnans going to say, oh, actually you know my i should say my friend because they grew up together my old friend no, its all fake. Hes not going to do that. So theres this amazing story which is might be a wrestling tall tale, but i wouldnt be surprised if its true where basically adnan is supposed to have a two out of three falls match with andre the giant who is not yet named andre the giant was just Andre Roussimoff in baghdad and. They go there and before the match plan that its going to be adnan wins the first one. Then andre wins the second one. And then stunning from the tie, adnan wins the third one and it was the anniversary of it was like the birthday of the iraqi military. So everybody had their kalashnikovs. It was going to be big party and. The trouble is after theyre having their secret conference backstage because again, nobody can know wrestling is fixed. You know, is being carried out and shaking hands before the match with all the dignitaries. And one of them is saddam. And says youre going to do great, be victory is adnan. I hope on cspan i can quote a swear word like this guy is a going to take him down . And if tries anything funny, hes going to get this and. He lifts up his coat and has a solid gold pistol. Yeah. And he says if he does anything to you, im to put bullets in him and theyre going to have to send back to france in a pine box. And it was. And adnan was like, oh, wait, hes winning the second match. And i dont know whether that meant like if he, i dont know so he goes into the match and like while in a headlock at one point neither of them like adnan doesnt speak great french and andre doesnt speak great arabic theyre both fumbling through english to be like you have to lose. You have lose this one. Oh i like doing it really secretly because the thing, i mean adnan wrote like if, if they had gone the original plan and andre had pinned adnan one, two, three it was bunch of heavily armed iraqis who felt that their National Shame had been ignited, including Saddam Hussein. Threatened to kill andre the giant. Yeah, and they anyway, its a very long story, but like this story, this book is filled with stuff like this because you would not believe who is a fan and who is a mark. Yeah, this stuff has real influence ends. Yes. And even just sort of that like theres like a montage with the whole cindy lot. Like, you know, its like literally be like andy warhol, steinem like all these geraldine ferraro, youre like, what are all these people doing in one place . Yeah, yeah, yeah. But i guess it really just shows. I mean, feel like, you know, my, my own understanding of wrestling has always been that it was like something thats in the background, but it was really in the forefront. And it was interesting to read about when there was a moment where i feel like, you know. Its the mid eighties. Yeah, like 1984 and 1999, 2012. And yeah, you just couldnt escape wrestling those, those times. 84, 85, in the 1980s. 2000. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, i would love to go back to something you started to talk about earlier because i think that another thing that the book really delicately does is sort of introduce, you know, the bizarre reality of wrestling simultaneously being this thing that on face is like this hyper masculine like sort very classically patriarchal around normative, all of that. And yeah and yeah, the costumes are yeah, its a grind, you know, but not just that, not just that. You know, what i find most interesting, the sort of queer subtext of wrestling is not the obvious stuff is like, yeah, its sculpts in men with colorful clothing and not much of it touching each other. Okay. Ha ha ha. Whats really queer in radical way is . You have those two men and they have show weakness. You have to show a lot of weakness. They to be very vulnerable. I wrote all the essay about this for polygon. You have this cynical hang on for a wrestling match. Its not strength, its weakness. You can have two people walk into a ring. Lets say you and i were walking into a ring. Neither of us has any. I dont. I mean, you can run, but neither is any particular like. Sure. Great bench press. Yeah yeah, no ability, but you walked up to me and i walked up to you and i said, hey, im going to give you the finger poke of do and i poke you like this and you go, i go, i know it hurts so much. Then were having a wrestling. You need to have one person who is willing show their secret face of pain and vulnerability. Being out of control. And that is something that i think very as speaking as a queer woman, i think is a very queer thing is making yourself radically open to in pain and people see you be vulnerable and in pain. Thats beautiful. That really is. Thank you. It really is. I mean, because theres theres you feel this way about other sorts sports, right. And like it almost makes you or me at least ill, you know, and i watch the joy of like a bunch of like men on, a Football Team that theyre hugging, crying and rates where emotion is alive. Yeah, yeah. Its it makes you sad that like i mean its its nice to see happening in that context but youre just sort of like, wow, okay. Like this really is the the thing that we as a society have allowed the amendment. So i guess theres a lot more theres a lot more about it thats queer and trans whatever. But thats the thing that i always come back to. I think, thats lovely. I think thats really nice. And theres a lot i mean, its interesting too, because there are a lot of stories in the book and know, im sure that unfold over the, you know, over the broadcasts of wrestling. But it is like its sort of the thing about Vince Mcmahon to being the sort of like slippery eel of like because there are because it seems like theres a lot of times where he really earns peoples sympathy and you want to believe that hes being genuine. I guess you just never know. You never know. He seems like hes always got angle going on and he it seems like he really, really. I mean, you know, i even loath to use the word manipulate. I guess that is what hes doing. I mean, we know that he would manipulate very good at manipulating reality and manipulating. Yeah, but some of the people you spoke to know would recount these. Theyd be you know, i had this sit down with vince and we had this really meaningful conversation, you know, and the next day hes on, you know, howard stern or something, talking that whole different thing about this, i guess. No, no. For that, youre referencing bret hart, who i spoke to at length. Yeah. The great wrestlers, bret the hitman hart. We we i spoke to bret a lot and he was talking how yeah they very long story short they had this conversation where after the death brets brother owen where vince was very gracious and said you im so sorry and you have whatever demands want, etc. And then a few weeks later, vince goes on this canadian sports talk tv show and goes like, i met with bret and all he wanted to do is talk about himself. And it was selfish right after the death of his brother, and it was like looking into the eyes of a skeleton and like all of this stuff. And its very very interesting. The lord giveth and the lord taketh away, you know. Yeah, he really. Yeah. I mean, and i guess that is also trumpian as well. Like, oh, you, theres never there are very few people in vinces life who he can, who you can count on having is permanent love. Yeah, im trying to think there there are few that he can count on loyalty wise, but there are very few people who can just go around thinking, oh, vince loves me. Im fine. Yeah, you know, hell never betray me like his daughter. Now, was. Was coceo while he was stepping back because of a bunch of sexual misconduct. And then forces his way back in and mysterious leaves. She abruptly wants to spend more time with her family. And its like, right, you know she was the chosen child to. Yeah. So and a lot of thats of a black box. I dont want to speculate too much whats happening right this second, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, i mean, and you can like, you know, theres a huge chunk at the end that simply the end notes, this book is very rigorous. 78 citations at the end. Yeah which is so it was such an incredible feat. Im always really like, thats so thank you very much. I did most of those end notes in like a 24 hour period because there was there was a formatting problem. Oh, my name. And i had not been paying attention to how to do it right. And then i like i am going to do this and wake up at 5 a. M. Oh my god. And by 5 a. M. The next day i am that kind of seems like the only way though. Yeah. Was like a college thing. I lived like that in like almost 20 years, but it worked out. Yeah im very glad i did that because not many wrestling books have worked, cited not not not to say all of them, but a lot of them dont bother with pointing you where they got the information. Yeah. Yeah well that really like i think that that gives it a level of credibility to go my work. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mean what was that so like where i mean, where you start. Like, did you, how did you make what ended up being like 50 pages of of and notes like yeah how did that work unfold for you . Oh, over the place. I dont have a process. Yeah. Like i just sort of every given would just go what seems like its the thing i should work on today. Yeah, because it was such a huge undertaking that there were any of things that were equally valid, right . Next steps at any given. Did you write it . Like moving through the time period chronologically or . Did you take on like i wrote it, i it chronologically, but research wise. It was all Everything Everywhere all at once. Just like that. Yeah. Movie, the popular film about the big popular film. Great. Okay, so this is how were doing the q a. Im going to get into some questions. Okay, whos got a question . Yes, i got a lovely person here with a yellow stripe. Her side. Hello. All right. Weve never met before, have we . Now . Now. Hey, whats your question . Oh, my question. Is okay. So you talked about how this like line of dominoes. Yeah. The thing of dominoes is that theres something that comes next. Theres more dominoes, right . So, yeah only halfway through. But how does this book compare us for countering america . Thats thing is im trying to i people keep asking me how does this book like what should we do . Which is always of course the big and im like, oh, this is the trouble when you diagnose the problem people that you to also have the solution i guess the closest thing i can come with to a solution is we leave it at this way kayfabe is the enemy. Kayfabe is just tool. Kayfabe is something that exists in a lot of different industry disciplines, art forms. When i say religion is a form kayfabe, i dont mean that as an insult to religion or kayfabe. Religion is a state of tension between fact and between the provable and the unprovable, between rationality and faith you know, its some kind. Your worldviews are always to have some degree of kayfabe. And i guess what i would offer pick your kayfabe and act it, you know, find an i wish. I wish i could tell you what ideology the right one. I just i just dont have that kind of brain. But like, find something you believe in makes other that other peoples interiority needs and then kind commit to that, you know, even its something you come up with yourself. Its just have principles and i know that sounds so principles and have in the form even that faith is kayfabe that your actions can have positive and the main thing i wanted to at was just to dispose of two other the two tactics of saying youre a bad or you said something factually incorrect. I just we need better need better kayfabe. Yeah we a better kayfabe than theirs. Well yeah i mean is sort of a thing, right. Like its sort, i mean, you know, one side is doing a lot of kayfabe and one side its almost like talking different languages, you know, its like maybe, maybe you need some, like, flip side kayfabe in order to that whats yeah thats what im saying is like you cant live without kayfabe and it would be really nice if there were a narrative that you could lose yourself right now and believe the world would be better if. We all enjoy the show and participate this magic i dont people presenting that kind of vision right now in politics yeah you know what theyre presenting is much closer to either presenting you just empty calories or the republicans and theyre doing neo kayfabe which is is it real isnt it. Who knows . Tune in next. Not because of any of the etiology but because youre confused. Yeah. You know, and it makes you feel a certain way or something and it pulls the buttons in your, you know, it would be nice if we could get to a place where. There was a beautiful story we all chose to believe in. Mm hmm. Yeah. I dont know. Thats a great one. More questions. Yeah. So been a fan since as long as i can remember. My dad always me. It wasnt real, but that never really bothered. Not exactly. Well, the thing about competitive sports is its not like they are a produced and yeah its its yes some basketball got rid of and checking theres a yeah yeah yeah the pitch and know theyre trying to they want it to be more like wrestling every sport wants every sport envies wrestling because wrestling can just have the narratives sorry keep going at that. Theyre all there to make money. Yeah. You know if, if the if actual Athletic Competition serves that great, its not, you know. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yes. Mm hmm. True truth. Who else would say something, oh, yeah, we got. Oh, yeah, somebody in the back there. Yeah. So something i was i had in mind when i was reading the book is just how grueling of a job wrestling seems to be. Its awful. Its a terrible job right. And yet people do it. It reminded me, since true believer as a book, of course, or it reminds me reading theres a book, Marvel Comics the untold story, shared by shawn howe. Yeah, friend of comics industry. And he has read that you see all these stories, people just dying, horrible deaths. This person has a heart attack. This person wrestlings worse. And yet it feels like people just sort of do it. Anyway, i wondering what . Thats the capitalist dream factory. You get told that the money isnt the point. Do you get told that material are not the point . The point is being part of the dream. You know, the big collective cultural dream of pop culture and youve been sold the bill of goods that, the money and the material things dont matter. All that matters is the immaterial the magic. Then its easy, get exploited and top of that, i think theres just talk about magic. I think theres something slightly about being in a wrestling ring. I have now finally done it myself for first time. I didnt wrestle, but the launch event for this book in los angeles featured three wrestling matches. And you know, they constructed ring at this moose lodge in burbank and i stood in it and even just having that little bit, im just doing a little interview like this, this this person was interviewing me in front of the crowd. I was like, i get it. I get it. You hear stories like this over and over again. The where wrestlers referees managers, they will tell you the first time you step in that ring and the crowd pops. Youre never leaving . Yeah. Youre never leaving because youre never going to feel Something Like that again. And i saw and felt dax, i havent really had like a pop. I like just walked into the ring while people were cheering because they like but like when you accomplished something and a crowd either boos or cheers depending on what youre asking them to do. So apparently thats a very like almost physically addictive sensation. Yeah, great question. Yeah, weve got a couple up here here once as a so im going to let the cab person go first. I always a book. Oh, thats where else from Pilsen Community bronx. I love you, man. Youre one of those. Its great spot. Thats magnificent. Anyway going. Yes so you talk about you know the book only goes up to 99. Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about like what the wwf got up to in the sort of special period of . American psycho . Is this immediately after 911 . A ha ha. Oh, id rather go to the dark, but yeah. The first few years theres this period from like oh y fall oh one is around when i stopped watching not because of 911, but because the creative had really been dwindling, you know, for various reasons. One being vince had become a monopoly. He had bought his two major competitors earlier in the year, but didnt the contracts of the big wrestlers from his main competitor. So it was just this weird, muddled situation. I was kind of churning, giving up on it anyway. But 911 happens and vince ever the opportunist becomes the first athletic event. Live athletic event to come back like 911 on tuesday and then thursday night happens and and he comes out and gives this terrifying speech like you want you can watch it on youtube. Its just as nine, you know, nine, 13 speech and. Its just let let me put it this way. If vince had wanted to run for president , i think he would have won. Yeah, i dont think that was something was interested in. But if hed wanted to if he had wanted to run for president thousand as a third party candidate, he would have stood a better chance than nader did. Yeah. I mean, can you imagine if youre a conservative or a liberal in 2000, you walk into the booth and the option is bush, gore, vince, mcmahon. Im sorry. You probably have to believe on cspan youre going to vote for Vince Mcmahon in 2000, wed be living in a much worse, much stranger world, maybe better. I dont know thats freaky to think about. Well, now, especially i was actually i was thinking about this opportunity to just talk about it, but like i feel like the new its well you describe in the book to the cena ification wrestling. Yeah yeah. Right. That was the thing is like theres this period when it gets really juiced up like after after 11. Its not just that theres that that scary that i was talking about for the next few years up until 2007. And they really trying to push the envelope further and further, like necrophilia and, you know, mocking Sexual Assault claims and like just the end my Vince Mcmahon wrestling and winning against god that was that was something that you really cant make up you know they kept pushing it further and further and then in 2007, one of the most renowned and respected wrestlers, the history of the business, chris benoit, killed his wife inside and then killed. And that suicide completely derailed. The wwe all of a sudden, although vince was a real jerk to the congressional subcommittee that, questioned him about it and about steroid and whatever in wrestling. And although i dont think he really felt he had much personal responsibility, he did pgf him the contact it stopped being as edgy as it had been for previous ten years. Yeah but its still retain fans, although its not edgy so much anymore. And sometimes it can of veer into legalese. Did you really be saying that . But it still has the neo kayfabe quality of saying dont worry, this is all fake except youre never right. Right. You know that. And also, even if youre not expecting Something Real to happen, its saying its all fake. But were going to give you all this supplement material documentary fees and books and magazines, whatever, so that when you come to our show on television or on streaming, whatever you are basically playing an reality game in your head. Yeah, we have constructed like about what you think is the reality behind, the scenes wrestling far out, far out, scripted. Dude, it is. How much time do we have left . I dont want to. Were good. Owner two sounds great. I mean, i know how you do and i, i one to a point. Thats great, actually about the way that they, they sort of do rewrite history and signing kayfabe and yeah, documentaries and their stories because they own the tape libraries. So its like you cant make a documentary about the territories that vince vanquished the that hated him because he owns them. He owns media that remains of them. And more importantly, you dont have Mainstream Media outlets doing serious journalism history independently about wrestling. So wwe just sort of gets to call the shots they get to come up with the documentaries and say, well, know they are they partner with a e, the joke of the hulk that a e and they do this biography segments that are abc and were like they did one on china woman whose death is blood on the hands of wwe and Vince Mcmahon and they tried to sort of tell their own spin in on the story of her young death and its just like this how they get you. They make you think theyre they make you think theyre giving you the top layer of lie and the bottom layer of truth reality. Its lie, lie they lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie. And maybe theres a truth buried in there or you mix a few truths in there just to throw people off. Right . You know, and keep it going. Yeah, i feel like you can. But once people have dug something, they assume its treasure. Yeah, yeah, its true. And i think. Ryan, over here. Sorry. I dont know this person. I just. So you had mentioned that you had been you know, a wrestling fan, at least teenage years. Is there any, you know, either wrestler or someone in the wrestling business who threw your in your work who your of them or your perception them has significantly changed. Who significantly changed . Question thats a really good one to. Question oh, significantly changed. Well, ill tell you this. When i see interviews with terry now, i know there was a lot of coaching going into that because terry is a victim of what were talking about, terry funk of the great wrestlers of all time. I got to interview and id seen ish interviews with him where he seemed like he was, you know, hes old. And hes taking a lot of bumps to the head, but hes winning re and i called him and maybe i caught him on a bad day, but hes taken a lot of bumps to the head. It was really rough and it was a romance. It wasnt so much moral change of opinion as a reminder that when you the product on television, even if its documentary, they took the best takes, you know and a lot of these guys hurt all the time and a lot of them are not going to get better and a lot of them, you know, union theres no pension, theres no Employer Health care. They can turn to. So i dont know that was one and then im trying to think of theres something more light i, i dont know if my opinion of bret hart changed but my my understa ending of him certainly changed. The big thing that really i i tell people about bret hart now like bret hart, if he had not the father he had who was a wrestling of his own and a wrestler, bret hart wanted to go to film school. And when you talk to bret at length, you figure out why he thats he thinks like a movie director, like that was why he was really good his matches hes really good at figuring out the beats and escalate versions of a story and also is good at vibes like he kind of gets what vibes feel cool and those are two things that are really essential being a filmmaker and i found that really interesting i feel like there was i just wonder is there anybody else who like the perceptions here . You know what i didnt get the interview him, but when i was a kid, i sort of thought paul heyman of stw and now wwe was. Interesting. But now then i came back to as an adult, i like seven years ago i had this big sort of jewish revelation where like i became, i become bar mitzvah. But like now really jewish. I think a lot about jewish stuff. And paul heyman me now is totally fascinating. I really hope i get to interview him for the sequel because he is he is the ultimate like survivor in wrestling. Hes which is unusual. There arent that many in wrestling and you cannot kill paul heyman. Paul heyman will be the last employee of wwe everyone else will be fired. Paul heyman will still be going to vince and saying like, oh, my tribal chief when he needs so i find it very interesting and i hope to interview him someday. But maybe thats where we stop it. What do you think . Yeah, its great. Oh, we got. Okay, love it. Yeah, yeah, great. Thank you so much for coming out and i welcome, everyone to the Woodrow Wilson center. We are congressionally chartered scholars, ship driven and fiercely nonpartisan. And we are also happy to welcome all of you here