Speaker 1: Also media. I'm going to tell you about three American
Speaker 1: ring masters. The first is the guy you think of
Speaker 1: when you think of ring masters. If you think of
Speaker 1: ring masters, think of a ring master, you're probably thinking
Speaker 1: of P. T. Barnum, or as many people call him,
Speaker 1: who was Hugh Jackman supposed to be in the Greatest
Speaker 1: Showman P T.
Speaker 2: Barnum at your service fee by putting together a show
Speaker 2: policies and I need a star every one of us.
Speaker 3: Especial and nobody is like any one us.
Speaker 1: Well, he's supposed to be P. T. Barnum. And sorry,
Speaker 1: I hadn't seen this movie, but it's so fucking bad,
Speaker 1: Like it's worse than my favorite bad biopic twenty fourteen's Jobs,
Speaker 1: starring Ashton Kutcher as one Steve Jobs.
Speaker 4: What are you gonna you get to fire me?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 6: I already fired.
Speaker 1: You A perfect impression. That's Steve alright.
Speaker 7: But P. T.
Speaker 1: Barnum was, in fact a famous American promoter and circusman,
Speaker 1: presented in this twenty seventeen Disney movie as an awesome
Speaker 1: guy who empowered other people by displaying them in a
Speaker 1: freak show for personal profit. Truly wild that they tried it.
Speaker 1: It's a totally dishonest hero narrative and it made half
Speaker 1: a billion dollars and P. T. Barnum would have loved that.
Speaker 1: He was a fucking liar. So who was the real Barnum?
Speaker 1: He was the guy who started his career as a
Speaker 1: displayer of quote unquote human curiosities by purchasing and displaying
Speaker 1: a disabled, enslaved woman named Joyce Heath, who he lied
Speaker 1: to indicate was the one hundred and sixty one year
Speaker 1: old nurse of the long dead George Washington. Slavery wasn't
Speaker 1: even legal in New York at this time. Barnum had
Speaker 1: to find a loophole in order to exploit Heath's labor,
Speaker 1: and when she passed away, he charged civilian's fifty cents
Speaker 1: to watch a live autun of her corpse. This was
Speaker 1: a guy who targeted vulnerable families with quote unquote unusual
Speaker 1: children like Charles Stratton, a child with Dwarfism, and Annie Jones,
Speaker 1: the baby who had become the Bearded Lady, and there
Speaker 1: shown in the Greatest Showmen as consenting adult parties, when
Speaker 1: in reality they were displayed as freaks starting when they
Speaker 1: were under five years old. Same goes for the underlying
Speaker 1: racism and xenophobia of displaying children from El Salvador as
Speaker 1: mysticized as tech twins. The list goes on, Barnum's act
Speaker 1: was so ablest racist and xenophobic that people in the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds knew it was that. But Barnum himself was
Speaker 1: a character within the world of this circus. He was
Speaker 1: always at the center of it, and with the character
Speaker 1: of Barnum came a necessity to control the narrative of
Speaker 1: that character. Ringmaster I probably the most successful of the
Speaker 1: last century. This Ringmaster did not just become a multi
Speaker 1: millionaire off a tremendously successful, deeply exploited a franchise, but
Speaker 1: managed to make himself a character within that world more
Speaker 1: successfully than Barnum ever. Did somebody call my mom?
Speaker 5: I am the Boss?
Speaker 1: Vincent J. McMahon, like Barnum before him, McMahon wrote himself
Speaker 1: a character in his own circus, only to be publicly
Speaker 1: disgraced in the last few years. He is, of course,
Speaker 1: the extremely successful owner of the WWE, who turned his
Speaker 1: father's wrestling franchise into an empire that wasn't strictly focused
Speaker 1: on athletics, but just as much on the personas of
Speaker 1: the wrestlers themselves. Professional wrestling is soap operas that straight
Speaker 1: men are allowed to cry at right, and the characters
Speaker 1: that McMahon built reflect a lot of the same prejudices
Speaker 1: that we were seeing in Barnum's Act one hundred years earlier.
Speaker 1: It's a short road to finding racism, sexism, and xenophobia
Speaker 1: in the way these characters are presented. Here is Vince
Speaker 1: McMahon in character talking to a character named Saboo.
Speaker 3: We'll be damned. I thought I was in Texas. Hell,
Speaker 3: I'm not in Texas. I'm an a Danastan.
Speaker 6: Hey, boys, check it out.
Speaker 8: Here's a member of the Taliban.
Speaker 2: All wait a minute, I know you. You're the guy Saboo.
Speaker 1: This is just a random example, but you name a
Speaker 1: racial or ethnic group and the WWE has created a
Speaker 1: character to offend them, either to appeal to American jingoism
Speaker 1: or to make people hate the character mister McMahon, who
Speaker 1: is supposed to be evil. This is a constant distinction
Speaker 1: made by Vince McMahon, the actual McMahon. It's the character
Speaker 1: who's evil. The man himself is a tough but fair
Speaker 1: businessman who could be brutal, but ultimately is a hard
Speaker 1: working American success story. McMahon takes advantage of this narrative
Speaker 1: loophole all the time. It makes it easier to distance
Speaker 1: himself from actual allegations of abuse behind the scenes. And
Speaker 1: because McMahon had more of a chokehold on the wrestling
Speaker 1: industry as the years went on, there's this feeling of
Speaker 1: Stockholm syndrome that haunts his legacy talent, like, well, he
Speaker 1: had no choice but to be evil. This is from
Speaker 1: the recent Netflix docuseries Mister McMahons to Who, And the
Speaker 1: timing of this docuseries is pretty interesting on Netflix's part
Speaker 1: because they have an upcoming partnership with the WWE with
Speaker 1: plans to broadcast their weekly raw events starting next January.
Speaker 1: So there's this both siziness to the Netflix strategy, the
Speaker 1: feeling of let's call out and dismantle the ring master
Speaker 1: for decades of unsavory behavior before beginning to broadcast his products.
Speaker 1: It's a pattern I've been noticing on that platform a
Speaker 1: lot recently. Another example is that Netflix recently broadcast a
Speaker 1: pretty broadly inaccurate Ryan Murphy mini series about the Menendez
Speaker 1: Brothers that drew a lot of criticism only to broadcast
Speaker 1: a new documentary from the perspective of the Menendez brothers
Speaker 1: in real life just a month later. So there's no
Speaker 1: consistent allyeship on a streamer. It's just asking the question,
Speaker 1: what will people watch? Okay, we'll broadcast it, but let's
Speaker 1: return to Vince for now. But McMahon's defense against any
Speaker 1: of this, against a full blown sex trafficking scandal, against rape,
Speaker 1: against racism, against protective and shielding abusers on his staff
Speaker 1: is that people are only willing to believe these allegations
Speaker 1: because he plays a bad guy on TV.
Speaker 2: A lot of people have confused through the years. Now
Speaker 2: who my charter was on television and who I am?
Speaker 2: He used to bug the hell out of me. I'm
Speaker 2: not that guy, They're realized. Doesn't matter what you want froms.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter how you want to be perceived. It's
Speaker 2: the way you are being perceived. Your perception is reality.
Speaker 1: And this worked for nearly half a century, but in
Speaker 1: a social media driven world where conversations around abuse and
Speaker 1: discrimination have now become more normalized, McMahon is a great
Speaker 1: example of how the ring master doesn't quite play in
Speaker 1: today's culture, and knowing the allegations against him and how
Speaker 1: he talks about it in this docuseries. Once you're accused of.
Speaker 2: Rape, you're a rapist, but it was consensual and actually
Speaker 2: had it been a rape, the statue limitations everyone out
Speaker 2: fucking good.
Speaker 1: Ring Master three. George Shay wasn't planning on getting into PR.
Speaker 1: He wanted to be a writer, but being a writer
Speaker 1: is not particularly profitable, and George Shay wanted money. And
Speaker 1: when you want to write and make money, the lessons
Speaker 1: of Barnum and McMahon would come in Handy. Just start
Speaker 1: a big show that crosses reality with real life and
Speaker 1: don't really worry about the collateral damage. That's the ring
Speaker 1: master way. And Shay was mentored by one of the best,
Speaker 1: a guy named Morty Mattz, the now one hundred year
Speaker 1: old PR mogul, who is a massive New York advertising pioneer,
Speaker 1: including Ah. The point is emerging then Nathan's famous hot
Speaker 1: dog eating contest. Yes, it's a hot dog episode, and
Speaker 1: it's George Shay who is the indus suitable ring master
Speaker 1: of the professional hot dog eating world, at least at
Speaker 1: the time of this recording. Because Morti Mattz came up
Speaker 1: with the Nathan's Famous hot Dog eating contest in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen seventies, coming in hot with the lie that
Speaker 1: this contest had been going on on the fourth of
Speaker 1: July every year since the nineteen tens, which is not true.
Speaker 1: The Nathan's contest was then what it is now an
Speaker 1: advertisement for Nathan's famous hot dogs, and while the hot
Speaker 1: dog eating contest was a fun thing known locally in
Speaker 1: the seventies into the late eighties, it wasn't anywhere near
Speaker 1: the phenomenon it is now. In the early nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: Mattz offloads the contest onto George Shay entirely, and Shay
Speaker 1: takes it extremely seriously. And what I think the contest
Speaker 1: does most successfully in these early years is further cement
Speaker 1: the iconography of the hot dog, the phallic tube meet
Speaker 1: with American patriotism. And that becomes very important here, because
Speaker 1: once he's brought into the fold in the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: George Shay casts himself as the MC in his Ringmaster
Speaker 1: character at every event. In nineteen ninety seven, George and
Speaker 1: his brother Richard Shay founded Major League Eating, a professional
Speaker 1: organization that formalized eating as an American sport. And because
Speaker 1: they controlled the Nathan's Contest essentially gave the brothers a
Speaker 1: media monopoly for pro eaters in the US, and the
Speaker 1: contest grows in popularity and jingoism as the years go on.
Speaker 1: Shay finds a character for himself that's somewhere between Barnum
Speaker 1: and McMahon, not afraid to antagonize on stage competitors or
Speaker 1: encourage rivalries, but also being overtly worshipful of his champions
Speaker 1: in a way that McMahon would never dream of. And
Speaker 1: while George has distanced himself from the pro wrestling comparisons,
Speaker 1: he has overt connections to the WWE. His wife worked
Speaker 1: there as well as for some American soap operas. And
Speaker 1: so while it sounds unhinged that this would be how
Speaker 1: we're introducing hot dog eaters, I need you to listen
Speaker 1: to how George Shay brings out his champions. Here's how
Speaker 1: he brought out Joey Chestnut in twenty fourteen, And you've
Speaker 1: got to hand it to him.
Speaker 9: Only moments from her womb, and before she even placed
Speaker 9: him to.
Speaker 8: Her breast, his mother held him close.
Speaker 5: And whispered in his ear.
Speaker 6: She said, you are of my flesh, but you are
Speaker 6: not mine own fate is your father, and you belong
Speaker 6: to the people.
Speaker 1: Oh no, and I've always of the far of July,
Speaker 1: of the Nation of the Free Zak.
Speaker 4: The seven time Nathan's.
Speaker 10: Famous champion of the Workous ladies and gentlemen love me here,
Speaker 10: my Jeyada.
Speaker 1: Oh he is dude. Like it or not, It's effective
Speaker 1: and I like it. It makes sense in context once
Speaker 1: you understand a little bit more about the showmanship that
Speaker 1: comes with professional wrestling, and it's very entertaining. And after
Speaker 1: George takes over, Americans generally win the Nathan's Contest through
Speaker 1: the early to mid nineties with what are now considered
Speaker 1: to be amateur hot dog numbers nineteen twenty one pathetic.
Speaker 1: But starting in nineteen ninety seven, something interesting happens. Japanese
Speaker 1: competitor Hirofumi Nakajima wins, a twenty two year old one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty five pound competitor who stood in stark
Speaker 1: contrast to the huskier American competitors. And it's here when
Speaker 1: an international element is introduced in what's been marketed as
Speaker 1: the Ultimate American Contest, where the George Shay character really
Speaker 1: finds his voice.
Speaker 5: See a lot of what I say is not literally
Speaker 5: true in terms of words, but it's emotionally true.
Speaker 1: His angle, like mcmahonon Barnum, a lot of xenophobia, and
Speaker 1: this only escalates as Japanese competitors continue to flock to
Speaker 1: the Nathan's Contest into the new millennium. In Japan, televised
Speaker 1: professional eating was already very much a thing, and Shay,
Speaker 1: by his own account, both encouraged Japanese competitors to come
Speaker 1: to the US to compete and was xenophobic in the
Speaker 1: promotions leading up to it to stoke more American audience reaction.
Speaker 1: This is from Nicole Lucas Hayms's twenty nineteen thirty for
Speaker 1: thirty called the Good, the Bad, the Hungry.
Speaker 5: Everything was a self fulfilling prophecy. If we said, you know,
Speaker 5: there was a championship belt that was lost in Japan,
Speaker 5: there was right. If we said that we had a
Speaker 5: rivalry with the Japanese, we did. If we said there
Speaker 5: was a circuit of events, there was right, and everything
Speaker 5: sort of just came true.
Speaker 1: But there was no Japanese competitor, no competitor globally. That
Speaker 1: made a bigger first impression on the Nathan's Contest than
Speaker 1: to Kiaro Kobyashi in two thousand and one. He was
Speaker 1: completely unknown to American audiences, but he was already a
Speaker 1: hugely successful eater and personality in Japan, and when he
Speaker 1: came to the Nathan's Contest, Kobe quite literally doubled the
Speaker 1: hot dog eating record of two thousand contest winner Kazutoyo Ara.
Speaker 1: He ate fifty hot dogs in twelve minutes. It had
Speaker 1: never been done before, and while George Shay had been
Speaker 1: able to poke at his xenophobia angle while Americans were
Speaker 1: nipping at Japanese competitor's heels, Kobe changed the game entirely,
Speaker 1: and he won the Nathan's Contest back to back for
Speaker 1: six years. And so Ring Master Shay spots an opportunity,
Speaker 1: one that feeds into the nationalism the contest is marketed on,
Speaker 1: and he sets out to find an American competitor to
Speaker 1: pit against kobea but none materialized right away, and in
Speaker 1: the meantime, Kobe became popular on American TV for his
Speaker 1: braggadocious persona and technique, really legitimizing eating as a strategic
Speaker 1: sport and not as she had positioned it in the past.
Speaker 1: As a sinful American gorging session, to which I say,
Speaker 1: why not both? Right? Anyways, here's Kobayashi competing against a
Speaker 1: bear on Spike TV in the mid two thousands.
Speaker 4: And now introducing to my right his opponent, the Beast.
Speaker 4: He descends from Kodiak Island, Alaska. Fully erect. This beast
Speaker 4: stands over eight feet tall and weighs in tonight at
Speaker 4: one thousand and eighty nine pounds.
Speaker 11: There we go down.
Speaker 1: Kobyashi must know that's it, this is going on, and
Speaker 1: that is it.
Speaker 3: We have aware.
Speaker 12: He is aware.
Speaker 1: The Beast has one. When I tell you he was popular,
Speaker 1: I mean Spike TV. What a moment in time. And
Speaker 1: keep in mind Kobe is becoming famous alongside a huge
Speaker 1: reality television boom in the US, one that Major League
Speaker 1: Eating was eager to ride the wave of ESPN began
Speaker 1: broadcasting the contest in two thousand and four, at the
Speaker 1: same time that major reality franchises like Survivor, American Idol,
Speaker 1: The Apprentice, The Biggest Loser, The Amazing Race, and on
Speaker 1: and on and on. We're doing blockbuster runs and averaging
Speaker 1: millions upon millions of viewers. Throughout the two thousands, the
Speaker 1: Chaise tried to ingratiate the mL and by extension, the
Speaker 1: success of Kobayashi into this reality TV environment, producing specials
Speaker 1: like the Saint Patrick's Stage Chowdown and the Turkey Bowl.
Speaker 1: This Kobe versus Bear moment was a part of a
Speaker 1: Fox reality show called Man Versus Beast in two thousand
Speaker 1: and three, and by the way, legend has it that
Speaker 1: Kobe won during the dress rehearsal. No doubt that EML
Speaker 1: breaking into the mainstream was very well timed, because there
Speaker 1: was this huge interest in reality TV in the two
Speaker 1: thousands that only increased with events like the two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven Writers' strike hitting the scripted space with setbacks.
Speaker 1: And who happened to be watching Kobe v. Behar but
Speaker 1: the American competitor that George Shay had been waiting for
Speaker 1: one Joseph Chestnut. Also, his middle name is Christian, which
Speaker 1: makes me laugh. Joseph Christian Chestnut. Here he is in
Speaker 1: the thirty for thirty.
Speaker 11: It was so much easier for me to motivate myself
Speaker 11: when I thought Kobyashi was purely the enemy in my nemesis.
Speaker 1: The ring master had found the rivalry that matched his vision,
Speaker 1: and now it was possible to position Kobayashi as the
Speaker 1: outsider and Joey as the scrappy American champion. And it's
Speaker 1: Shay who oversaw and actively fostered a hot dog feud
Speaker 1: that lives rent free in my mind until this day.
Speaker 1: The great view of Kobayashi Versus Chestnut, a narrative engineered
Speaker 1: by a character right on stage with them, a true
Speaker 1: American ringmaster, the grand narrative of Kobayashi Versus Chestnut. Your
Speaker 1: sixteenth Minute starts now Joy Service sixteen sixteen. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take a look
Speaker 1: at the Internet's characters of the day and see how
Speaker 1: their moment affected them and what that says about the
Speaker 1: Internet and us. And this week we are talking about
Speaker 1: my fucking Wheelhouse competitive hot dog eating. Yes, this is
Speaker 1: the second episode of sixteenth Minute about hot dogs. I
Speaker 1: don't know what to tell you. This is my life,
Speaker 1: this is my passion, and they're not going to let
Speaker 1: me write a second book about it, no matter how
Speaker 1: many times I ask. And in case you're new here,
Speaker 1: I did actually write the first book about it. It's
Speaker 1: called Raw Dog The Naked Truth about hot Dogs, and
Speaker 1: you can buy it wherever books are sold. But today
Speaker 1: we're going to be going over the famed rivalry of
Speaker 1: two the men who tend to become the main character
Speaker 1: on the fourth of July every calendar year, current hot
Speaker 1: Dog Eating Champion of the World Joey Chestnut and former
Speaker 1: hot dog Eating Champion of the World Takio Kobayashi. But
Speaker 1: unlike other episodes of this show, I'm not looking to
Speaker 1: talk to them, but the people who have shaped their story.
Speaker 1: If you're a fan of the contest, even casually, you
Speaker 1: know about this feud. It's been going on for nearly
Speaker 1: twenty years, and Kobayashi's professional eating career in both Japan
Speaker 1: and the States goes back even longer. But even if
Speaker 1: you're not a hot dog fan, you might have heard
Speaker 1: recently that these rivals went head to head live on
Speaker 1: Netflix this past Labor Day on September second, twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four in Las Vegas, and it was a big deal,
Speaker 1: not only because it had been nearly fifteen years since
Speaker 1: the two had competed and Kobayashi had all but left
Speaker 1: the sport in the US, but because for a long
Speaker 1: time they would have been contractually barred from doing a rematch.
Speaker 1: This is because of how the contracts for Major League
Speaker 1: Eating were run. Joey was largely barred from participating in
Speaker 1: eating events that had not been approved by the organization
Speaker 1: in advance, and as Kobayashi was no longer a member
Speaker 1: of Major League Eating. More on that in a bit,
Speaker 1: this meant a rematch wouldn't be possible. But this past summer,
Speaker 1: Joey's contract with the MLEE was discontinued. We'll get into why,
Speaker 1: but essentially because he wanted to pursue business opportunities that
Speaker 1: conflicted with Major League Eatings. Joey took a contract with
Speaker 1: Impossible Foods, a vegan brand and competitor of Nathan's famous,
Speaker 1: meaning that unless he dropped the deal, MLEE would drop him.
Speaker 1: Joey chose Impossible, and all of a sudden, the mL
Speaker 1: was out of the picture and left a clean path
Speaker 1: for the two rivals to finally rematch. And yes, of
Speaker 1: course I was there. We're going to release a minisode
Speaker 1: about what the Internet's reaction and interaction with it was
Speaker 1: like this Thursday. But today we're gonna look at how
Speaker 1: this story evolved over twenty years, both online and in media,
Speaker 1: to yield a sports rivalry that McMahon or Barnum themselves
Speaker 1: would kill for. This is something I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: a lot recently, which you can probably tell from my
Speaker 1: bizarre over preparation to try to better understand P. T.
Speaker 1: Barnum and Vince McMahon before getting to George Shay and
Speaker 1: before anyone sues me. They're all litigious. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: they are all the same guy, but they're cut from
Speaker 1: the same cloth, right. They're businessmen, they're hyper visible, and
Speaker 1: they're crafters of narrative that the general public can engage
Speaker 1: with as if it's true, or engage with as if
Speaker 1: it's fiction and still enjoy the product. But the product
Speaker 1: is other people. And as I thought about this, I
Speaker 1: felt like this same explanation could apply to a lot
Speaker 1: of contemporary social media. Well, there's plenty of discourses and
Speaker 1: harassment campaigns led by modern ring masters your Ben Shapiro's,
Speaker 1: your Peers, Morgan'ses, all the way down to the drama
Speaker 1: YouTubers who pay their bills speculating about other niche celebrities
Speaker 1: without really talking to anyone except Google AI. These days,
Speaker 1: the ring master is you guessed, it may be the
Speaker 1: algorithmth Internet algorithms, as we've discussed many, many times on
Speaker 1: this show, have become increasingly forceful drivers of who becomes
Speaker 1: a character of the day in the last ten to
Speaker 1: fifteen years, not just on our social media platforms, but
Speaker 1: on streaming platforms like Netflix, which broadcasted this rematch between
Speaker 1: Joey and Kobe. So Yes, the rematch, titled Unfinished Beef
Speaker 1: Pretty Good, did allow for both Kobayashi and Chestnut more
Speaker 1: ostensible narrative controls than the way that they were presented
Speaker 1: by George Shay back in the day. But I don't
Speaker 1: think that there's a lack of a ring master here.
Speaker 1: At the Vegas event in September, while the thrill of
Speaker 1: the competition was the same, the vibe was different. The
Speaker 1: space that George Shay's voice would usually fill was replaced
Speaker 1: with corporate synergy. So what does that difference look like? Well,
Speaker 1: to understand, we'll have to return to what the rivalry
Speaker 1: looked like under the steady control of a ring master
Speaker 1: to say for sure. So come with me if you
Speaker 1: will to the fourth of July two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: and just to reiterate, the majority of interview clips with Kobayashi,
Speaker 1: Chestnut and Shay are coming from today's guest, Nicole Lucas
Speaker 1: Haim's twenty nineteen documentary The Good, The Bad, the Hungry.
Speaker 1: As we discussed, Kobe came to the States to compete
Speaker 1: in the Nathans Contest in two thousand and one, less
Speaker 1: than three months after the release.
Speaker 13: Of Shrek Somebody and two months before nine to eleven,
Speaker 13: a fragile time, and while Kobe was not the first
Speaker 13: Japanese champion to take the contest by storm, he was
Speaker 13: in fact the third in a short amount of time.
Speaker 1: He was by far the best competitor they'd ever seen.
Speaker 1: For context, the person who won the two thousand contest
Speaker 1: was victorious by three and an eighth hot dog, and
Speaker 1: Kobe won in two thousand and one by nineteen hot dogs.
Speaker 1: He could not be denied, and he was initially celebrated
Speaker 1: by the crowd.
Speaker 14: A little kid is incredible for total beating of the Americans.
Speaker 5: He was like a convey a belt. He was just
Speaker 5: putting them in two at a time.
Speaker 1: But this wouldn't last. While xenophobic and often just boldly racist,
Speaker 1: it's not super surprising that a hyper American broadcast would
Speaker 1: be eager to turn on a Japanese competitor. You don't
Speaker 1: need me to tell you that relations between the US
Speaker 1: and Japan in the last one hundred years have not
Speaker 1: been great. If that's how we want to briefly summarize
Speaker 1: Americans dropping two atomic bombs onto Japanese cities in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty five and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in
Speaker 1: the US back in nineteen forty one. How is Pearl
Speaker 1: Harbor coming up in my Hot Dog episode? It's far
Speaker 1: too complicated a dynamic to recap in detail here, but
Speaker 1: suffice it to say American media was no stranger to
Speaker 1: irrationally villainizing Japanese people, and doing so appealed to some
Speaker 1: inherent and lasting prejudice within a lot of Americans. And
Speaker 1: Kobe wasn't the only Asian competitor to be taking the
Speaker 1: eating seed by storm. Longtime women's champion Sonya Thomas is
Speaker 1: a South Korean born American eater who was a longtime
Speaker 1: head to head competitor with Chestnut and Kobayashi, only to
Speaker 1: be sidelined in twenty eleven when George Shay decided to
Speaker 1: separate the contest by binary gender, announcing at the time.
Speaker 8: I don't know that the thinking was parochial.
Speaker 1: It was more imbrasive. You can read my book Broad
Speaker 1: Dog for more on that. Gender discrimination and professional eating
Speaker 1: is a whole other story. I have to stop myself.
Speaker 1: In The Good, The Bad, the Hungry, filmmaker Nicole Lucas
Speaker 1: Haymes does a terrific job of illustrating the cultural differences
Speaker 1: between Joey and Kobe, mainly by interviewing their families. Joey
Speaker 1: was raised in a southern California middle class household with
Speaker 1: the American notion that food was comfort and commune, and
Speaker 1: Kobe was raised in Japan by a father who didn't
Speaker 1: approve of consuming food to access. As Kobe's father tells it,
Speaker 1: he really only grew to fully understand and support his
Speaker 1: son's career when he saw the level of care and
Speaker 1: passion that Kobe had for it. There's also an inherent
Speaker 1: difference in Joey and Kobe's approach to competition as a concept.
Speaker 1: Kobe mentions towards the end of the documentary that he
Speaker 1: was raised with the notion that a competitor is to
Speaker 1: be respected and honored, while Joey's American mentality was more
Speaker 1: like this.
Speaker 11: He can't just be that much better. There's a lot
Speaker 11: of nice road where I can't quite to sleep because
Speaker 11: I'm thinking about, well, why why can that Japanese man
Speaker 11: eat so much more than everybody else?
Speaker 1: Add this to the frequent language barrier dissonance, and you
Speaker 1: get a narrative that's very malleable for George Shay, something
Speaker 1: that he certainly made Hay of at the peak of
Speaker 1: the rivalry. Joey and Kobe both admit that having such
Speaker 1: an intense competitor was deeply motivating, and Kobe's margin of
Speaker 1: victory grew slimmer, not just in hot dog victories but
Speaker 1: across mL events throughout the mid two thousands. Joey finished
Speaker 1: third behind Sonya Thomas in two thousand and five nineteen
Speaker 1: hot dogs behind Kobe, only to surge ahead to losing
Speaker 1: by barely two hot dogs. Just the next year. He
Speaker 1: was nipping at Kobe's heels, and George Shay was not
Speaker 1: afraid to point it out, although at this time, to
Speaker 1: his credit, Shay does continue to give Kobe the worshipful
Speaker 1: intros that he's known for. Here's one of them.
Speaker 5: The rules of the universe do not apply in the
Speaker 5: one hundred and forty four pounds that comprise Takiaro Kobiyanshi.
Speaker 1: He is an.
Speaker 5: Alchemist who has transformed athletics into mathematics, mathematics into poetry,
Speaker 5: and poetry into history.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just really good. But by two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, as Joey continued to nip at his heels,
Speaker 1: Kobe hit an emotional wall after losing his mother to cancer.
Speaker 1: He originally stated that he would not be competing in
Speaker 1: the Nathan's Contest that year, but later reversed this decision,
Speaker 1: only to be beset by a jaw injury that George
Speaker 1: Shay referred to as jaw thritis. And while Kobe says
Speaker 1: to this day that this injury was genuinely sustained while
Speaker 1: training and yeah, that makes total sense when your job
Speaker 1: is shoveling food into your mouth, the attitude of Joey
Speaker 1: and George at the time was, yeah, you're bullshitting man.
Speaker 1: You're just afraid that Joey's gonna beat you, which, by
Speaker 1: the time the documentary came out read as pretty insensitive.
Speaker 1: But in two thousand and seven, Joey Chesnutt did beat Kobayashi,
Speaker 1: taking him down by three hot Dogs sixty six to
Speaker 1: sixty three. Kobe made headlines that year for eating his
Speaker 1: own vomit in the final seconds of the contest, which
Speaker 1: is don't look that clip up. And while the racial
Speaker 1: and xenophobic invocations toward Kobe certainly existed before two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, there is a clear shift that takes place
Speaker 1: once he loses to an American. This is moments after
Speaker 1: Joey Chestnut's first win. We have our confidence back.
Speaker 6: The top days of the last six years are behind us.
Speaker 1: And of course Kobayashi notices this shift too and is
Speaker 1: deeply freaked out and hurt by it. He says in
Speaker 1: the documentary Coodo.
Speaker 8: I could feel the crowd becoming aggressive Tourny now god
Speaker 8: the most fast. I started to feel threatened that they
Speaker 8: might do something when I got off the stage, and
Speaker 8: we'll kind of up there. I didn't understand American culture quata,
Speaker 8: so it scared me.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, Joey certainly is not innocent in
Speaker 1: all of this. Once he wins, he gets cocky and
Speaker 1: antagonistic towards Kobe. But based on the footage that is
Speaker 1: included in Hams Is thirty for thirty, it's clear that
Speaker 1: George Shay is coaching both competitors to give answers to
Speaker 1: camera that will create the best promos closer to professional
Speaker 1: wrestlers than typical athletes, and in a clip that makes
Speaker 1: my blood boil, we hear George Shay play the character
Speaker 1: of George Shay describing the moment Kobe lost, then breaking
Speaker 1: character when the take is finished to reveal how he
Speaker 1: actually feels about it.
Speaker 5: After that event, I went back to my room and
Speaker 5: I wept. I silently. He wept because something was lost.
Speaker 5: I wept.
Speaker 1: And I really don't mean this with too much disrespect,
Speaker 1: because it's fine for some events to be fucking goofy, right.
Speaker 1: The problem was that the poking fund from the Shay
Speaker 1: side often seemed to be at their own champion's expense.
Speaker 1: Because I can attest in the twenty twenty four Netflix broadcast,
Speaker 1: reflects that both Kobe and Joey take eating very, very seriously.
Speaker 1: It is in no way a joke to them, just
Speaker 1: in case there was any doubt. Once he begins losing,
Speaker 1: things get complicated in the negotiation of Kobe's contract within
Speaker 1: the mL Kobe wants to be able to compete in
Speaker 1: his home country and not require approval from the Shay
Speaker 1: Brothers to do anything, but the mL says no, and
Speaker 1: if Kobe didn't agree to the terms of his restrictive contract,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't be welcomed back on the Nathan stage to
Speaker 1: try and reclaim his title from Joey. So by the
Speaker 1: late two thousands, Kobe is put between a rock and
Speaker 1: a hard place. Either he leaves opportunities and money that
Speaker 1: he'd worked for for years on the table, or he
Speaker 1: plays ball and continues to compete in the hot Dog
Speaker 1: contest for the next few years. Kobe tries to make
Speaker 1: this work as the chestnut rivalry seems to calcify into
Speaker 1: actual intense animosity between the two men after Kobe lost
Speaker 1: for a second time in an improvised overtime segment following
Speaker 1: a tie in two thousand and eight. By two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine, you see Joey and Kobe sitting beside each
Speaker 1: other with their arms folded, refusing to speak. And keep
Speaker 1: in mind, this is as social media is just starting
Speaker 1: to take shape and Internet culture is taking off, so
Speaker 1: there's not yet a platform where you can properly live tweet,
Speaker 1: or start a full blown vendetta against a hot dog rival.
Speaker 1: It would have even been hard to watch the contest
Speaker 1: at the time. ESPN didn't start broadcasting the event until
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, and that change had a lot
Speaker 1: to do with the hype around Kobayashi and anecdotally based
Speaker 1: on people in the competitive eating environment I've talked with,
Speaker 1: they genuinely fucking hated each other and while they didn't
Speaker 1: know it. In two thousand and nine, this would be
Speaker 1: the last time that the two appeared on the Nathan
Speaker 1: stage together, and Joey wins again, beating Kobe by a
Speaker 1: four hot dog margin. And as the years go on
Speaker 1: and Joey wins more and more, Kobe is no longer
Speaker 1: being cheered by American audiences like he was at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the decade. He's being booed in a way
Speaker 1: that I can't help feel. Echoes the way xenophobic WWE
Speaker 1: villains were brought on then and now the way you
Speaker 1: hear the iron Chic was summoned to the ring at
Speaker 1: the peak of his heeled them.
Speaker 10: Thank you very much, Jan Min and tell Jean Amarican
Speaker 10: and Teli jan Maamasiti all a maricha resting city people
Speaker 10: lot you always tells the hit or come to the Mayama.
Speaker 1: The difference is Kobayashi is not playing a character in
Speaker 1: the way that WWE performers are. He's not playing an
Speaker 1: exaggerated cultural stereotype in a soap opera for boys. He's
Speaker 1: just trying to be himself and compete. In the documentary,
Speaker 1: Joey recalls this feeling of extreme jingoism as well.
Speaker 11: America on the fourth of July. I think when Major
Speaker 11: le Gating made the headline of the contest of America
Speaker 11: versus Chapare, it hurt Kobyashi. It made him an enemy.
Speaker 1: It might not surprise you to hear that George Shay
Speaker 1: does not like the way that he comes off in
Speaker 1: this thirty for thirty. Nicole and I talk about it
Speaker 1: in our interview, But that makes sense because he can't
Speaker 1: stop saying things like this.
Speaker 5: I have always used pro American rhetoric, and the belt
Speaker 5: is a national prize from the day the Belt was made.
Speaker 5: You think I want Kobyashi to win six years in
Speaker 5: a row necessarily like if he wins, he wins, But
Speaker 5: that's not great for the narrative. The issue is, as
Speaker 5: someone who's competing this from an international basis, you have
Speaker 5: to understand that there's an American hero, and you can
Speaker 5: be a hero in the same exact way, but you
Speaker 5: can't be an American hero because you were an American.
Speaker 1: So presenting this ringmaster mentality as a funny and cool
Speaker 1: thing while clearly not considering the pain that uplifting Joey
Speaker 1: was causing Kobe Yashi, who and I'm not entertaining other
Speaker 1: opinions on this, did make the Nathan's contest popular on
Speaker 1: a national scale single handedly. Without Kobe, there is no
Speaker 1: Joey Chestnut period, and to not just feel discarded but
Speaker 1: actively hated in the US after losing really affected Kobe.
Speaker 1: He says in the thirty for thirty.
Speaker 8: Little Nathan st I was walking on the streets in
Speaker 8: New York. Makit passer by USA.
Speaker 1: Let's see that was hurt for.
Speaker 8: I felt unwelcomed. I was shocked.
Speaker 1: I used to cheer for.
Speaker 8: Me, didn't think kik and I started to feel I
Speaker 8: wasn't welcomed in America anymore.
Speaker 1: Twenty ten is the last Straw, now deeply disillusioned with
Speaker 1: the mL and to some extent, America in general. Contract
Speaker 1: negotiations with Kobayashi fall apart for the final time, and
Speaker 1: he's barred from competing in the contest for good. But
Speaker 1: Kobe is a showman himself and always has been, and
Speaker 1: in protest shows up to the twenty ten contest in
Speaker 1: an iconic black T shirt with green text reading free Kobe.
Speaker 1: And while accounts differ here as to why this happened,
Speaker 1: and Kobe hopped on stage during the contest to continue
Speaker 1: this protest, and here it's the final turn of the screw.
Speaker 1: Instead of engaging with the one time hot Dog hero,
Speaker 1: the mL sends security to arrest Kobe and there's a
Speaker 1: physical struggle to get him off the stage. I still
Speaker 1: can't kind of believe this happened. It's very cruel and
Speaker 1: uncomfortable to watch.
Speaker 15: Six time winner Tekaru Tsunami Kobayashi was detained by police
Speaker 15: after storming the stage at the annual contest following a
Speaker 15: contractual dispute with organizers, and while Jaws relished his win,
Speaker 15: Kobayashi was charged with trespassing and resisting arrest.
Speaker 1: And of course, the contest goes on and Joey wins again.
Speaker 1: And while there's plenty of fascinating hot dog drama, you
Speaker 1: can read a certain someone's book to learn more about
Speaker 1: the rivalry between Joey and Kobe falls off here for
Speaker 1: nearly fifteen years. Chestnut loses one to Matt Stoney in
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, but outside of that has now won the
Speaker 1: contest sixteen times and by the time I saw him
Speaker 1: compete on the Nathan stage in twenty twenty three, because yes,
Speaker 1: I go every year and I refuse to be embarrassed
Speaker 1: by it, Joey's only competitor is Joey. To his credit,
Speaker 1: in the last five years, Joey has appeared to reflect
Speaker 1: on this time in this rivalry a bit and has
Speaker 1: expressed regret at engaging with this xenophobic narrative as thoroughly
Speaker 1: as he did. But for Kobe this was too little,
Speaker 1: too late. The Shay Brothers invited him back, but Kobe
Speaker 1: never accepted an invitation from the MLE again. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: Kobe and his manager slash wife Maggie James lived between
Speaker 1: Japan and the US, and Kobe did continue to eat
Speaker 1: and compete professionally, just not in the mL which still
Speaker 1: held a stranglehold on competition in the US. By the
Speaker 1: time Haines's thirty for thirty came out, the two hadn't
Speaker 1: competed against each other in nearly a decade, and said
Speaker 1: they wanted to record their segments separately so they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to spend time together. And it's here that George
Speaker 1: Shay's narrative power over to Kia Kobe Yashi in particular,
Speaker 1: comes to an end. I think this moment from Kobe,
Speaker 1: and the doc explains this most succinctly.
Speaker 8: Amide As a Japanese, I wondered why Americans could not
Speaker 8: express themselves more constructive. I mean, in Japanese culture, we
Speaker 8: don't blue competitors, but it is not necessary to boo
Speaker 8: an opponent. Felni, But now I understand nice.
Speaker 2: Email.
Speaker 8: I see negative campaigns happening in American politics, that's the
Speaker 8: American way. You know, America now know that's not part
Speaker 8: of the cult.
Speaker 1: And even though it's seed unlikely to happen in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: it stayed Nicole Lucas Haymes's dream and if rumors are
Speaker 1: to be believed, Joey's dream to one day hold a
Speaker 1: rematch between the two. But as long as Joey was
Speaker 1: with the mL, that was never going to happen. Until
Speaker 1: summer twenty twenty four, when Joey was released from his
Speaker 1: MLEE contract and barred from the Nathan's Contest in a
Speaker 1: way that was stunningly similar to how Kobe Yashi was
Speaker 1: back in the day. He wanted to pursue more lucrative opportunities,
Speaker 1: and honestly, as I'm sure Joey knows, Joey was a
Speaker 1: bigger draw than the Nathan's Contest itself at that point,
Speaker 1: and so a decade and a half later, Joey and
Speaker 1: Kobe got to introduce themselves on the Netflix broadcast, tweak
Speaker 1: the rules of the contest to a place that was
Speaker 1: mutually agreeable, and have a final fight to the finish.
Speaker 1: But are they really in control of their own narratives
Speaker 1: now or are we creating this new, more opaque ringmaster.
Speaker 1: When we come back, I talk with the director of
Speaker 1: The Good, The Bad, The Hungry and the executive producer
Speaker 1: of Unfinished Beef on Netflix, Nicole Lucas Hayms. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to sixteenth Minute. My name is Jamie Loftus, and of
Speaker 1: course I took all the notes for the episode you're
Speaker 1: listening to in a fuzzy pink notebook that says welcome
Speaker 1: to Fabulous Las Vegas, What do you take me for?
Speaker 1: And this week we're revisiting the narrative saga that surrounded
Speaker 1: to Karo Kobayashi and Joey Chestnuts very recently concluded Rivalry.
Speaker 1: And there's no one I'd rather speak to about this
Speaker 1: than Nicole Lucas Hayms, director of the now very sighted
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen thirty for thirty doc us mentory The Good,
Speaker 1: the Bad, the Hungry. It's a piece that was really
Speaker 1: influential on me while I was working on Raw Dog
Speaker 1: and clearly on the mL and Professional Hot Dog Eating Itself.
Speaker 1: As we discussed in our interview, George Shay was said
Speaker 1: to be unhappy with his portrayal in the documentary, and
Speaker 1: after it's released, you can see a clear pullback from
Speaker 1: the broad nationalist narratives that used to define the contest
Speaker 1: in the twenty twenties. Shay has absolutely changed tack a
Speaker 1: little bit. And for the record, I did reach out
Speaker 1: to George Shay to do an interview for this episode
Speaker 1: and I didn't hear back, which honestly does not surprise me.
Speaker 1: If you've read my book, I'm very critical of him
Speaker 1: and I probably wouldn't have answered my email either. So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, here is my interview with the lovely
Speaker 1: Nicole Lucas Hayms.
Speaker 12: My name is Nicole Lucas Haymes and I am a
Speaker 12: documentary filmmaker.
Speaker 1: This is like a dream interview. Now, over the course
Speaker 1: of half a decade, been telling stories about professional eaters
Speaker 1: and specifically these two professional eaters. What was it like
Speaker 1: returning to this rivalry years later?
Speaker 12: So it's rare that has a long form journalist one
Speaker 12: has a chance to return to his stories so many
Speaker 12: years later. It was very interesting to me personally to
Speaker 12: see the changes that had happened in the ensuing years.
Speaker 12: There are personal changes from between Joey and Kobe. Joey
Speaker 12: really wanted to be the champion and worked very very
Speaker 12: hard for it.
Speaker 3: So when we.
Speaker 12: Filmed, which was twenty eighteen, it was relatively newer for him,
Speaker 12: so his legacy wasn't as cemented as it was in
Speaker 12: twenty twenty four, and then changed in the course of
Speaker 12: our production when.
Speaker 3: Joey then oh and by the way, do you still
Speaker 3: have a crush on him?
Speaker 1: And I have since met him and he was aware
Speaker 1: of it as herself.
Speaker 7: But yeah, yeah, so Joey was more of a hothead,
Speaker 7: and I think he would read it that and made
Speaker 7: some temperate remarks about Kobyashi and I've really found a
Speaker 7: much more.
Speaker 12: Mature individual six years later that in a short period
Speaker 12: of time he grew quite a bit. I think is
Speaker 12: striving to take a more elder statesman role, in addition
Speaker 12: to of course wanting to beat the pants out of
Speaker 12: Kobe and prove that he's the goat.
Speaker 3: Kobe as she went through a really.
Speaker 12: Interesting change that I wasn't really aware of because Kobe
Speaker 12: doesn't speak English very well, and so when we were
Speaker 12: talking long distance planning what became unfinished beef. This wasn't
Speaker 12: communicated to me until I really went to interview him,
Speaker 12: which was my second trip to Japan on this matter,
Speaker 12: and what I learned was that he had been very depressed.
Speaker 12: He had not competed during the pandemic, so he had
Speaker 12: been to see a monk who he solicited help from,
Speaker 12: who we met.
Speaker 3: I love this guy. That material ended up not making
Speaker 3: it into the.
Speaker 12: Broadcast satellite and bit by bit worked very hard to
Speaker 12: get over his depression because he was a competitor who
Speaker 12: wasn't competing. He needed it to have his life make sense.
Speaker 12: Joey had made some comment in the press about wanting
Speaker 12: to take on Kobe, and I had a bit of
Speaker 12: an aha moment, going, well, there's probably no one in
Speaker 12: the world who could do this except maybe me and
Speaker 12: maybe one or two other people, but yeah.
Speaker 3: Mostly probably me.
Speaker 12: So I reached out to Kobe via Maggie had asked
Speaker 12: if they were interested, and Kobe said yes, as long
Speaker 12: as they could compete by rules that Kobe felt were fair.
Speaker 12: So when Kobe knew that this contest was afoot and
Speaker 12: it was potentially possible, I think it helped him bit
Speaker 12: by bit come out.
Speaker 3: Of the depression.
Speaker 12: He was way more I think tender back in twenty
Speaker 12: eighteen when we were making the movie, because I don't
Speaker 12: think he had ever had an opportunity to fully tell
Speaker 12: his story. There was a lot of pain underneath it.
Speaker 3: This time, while we were interviewing him, we had.
Speaker 12: A bit of an AHA moment and said, I'm not
Speaker 12: crying and all of this this is in Joey's head.
Speaker 12: It was really kind of great to see that he
Speaker 12: had recovered from a dark knight of the soul and
Speaker 12: did so successfully.
Speaker 3: I think to show up for this battle was fantastic.
Speaker 1: It felt as if Joey and Kobe were more able
Speaker 1: to curate how they presented themselves versus in the Nathan's contest,
Speaker 1: were more common for someone to be presented to you.
Speaker 3: I think that's true.
Speaker 12: While I was the driving force, other people were hired
Speaker 12: to really execute the vision of the show. So the
Speaker 12: production company was den of thieves. And I would say
Speaker 12: it was fascinating to me to watch the care that
Speaker 12: they exhibited in helping Kobe and Joey have this be
Speaker 12: their event too. And of course I was part of it,
Speaker 12: but I'm a voice, but I'm not the driving force
Speaker 12: in making that broadcast passing.
Speaker 1: Of the on.
Speaker 12: There was a lot of discussion from their relatives, from
Speaker 12: each of their respective camps. We made the thirty for thirty,
Speaker 12: We try to get them together for a rematch with ESPN,
Speaker 12: and they would have nothing to do with it. Jenna
Speaker 12: Anthony commissioned The Good, The Bad, The Hungary thirty for
Speaker 12: thirty and she moved over to Netflix, and I knew
Speaker 12: that Jenna would be interested really quite an instrumental role
Speaker 12: in both of these hot Dog stories.
Speaker 1: They grew and changes people. How did their attitude towards
Speaker 1: one another change?
Speaker 3: Kobe's so careful about.
Speaker 12: Culturally in Japan, it seemed to me, from what I
Speaker 12: can understand really as an outsider, that there's a culture
Speaker 12: of honoring one's opponent, so it's very rare when anyone
Speaker 12: would publicly bad mouth an opponent.
Speaker 3: Though I understand that true.
Speaker 12: Hard feelings from Kobe's point of view to Joey, and
Speaker 12: in turn Joey to Kobe. I think Joey would love
Speaker 12: nothing more than to continue to compete against Kobeyashi, and
Speaker 12: I really do believe that he is sincere and that
Speaker 12: that is his competitor of his lifetime. So I think
Speaker 12: some of his attempts to be nice are motivated with
Speaker 12: the possibility of a future relationship.
Speaker 3: That's my opinion. Joey hasn't really said that.
Speaker 12: That was my personal takeaway. But I don't really think
Speaker 12: Kobe wants to do this anymore. He's going to retire.
Speaker 12: I mean, look, never say never, but I think he's
Speaker 12: pretty clear that.
Speaker 14: This was it.
Speaker 1: Why was this the narrative that was so effective in
Speaker 1: the first place When you were approaching that and getting
Speaker 1: to know the competitors better, what was sticking out to
Speaker 1: you about what was appearing again? And again in these
Speaker 1: hot dog hero narratives.
Speaker 12: I just recently said this to Jodie Walker and her piece,
Speaker 12: but truly mean this. I think George is a genius.
Speaker 3: He knows how to.
Speaker 12: Juxtapose the high and the low to make good fun.
Speaker 12: And he gets tone and and tone is a really
Speaker 12: hard thing to get right. I mean, when people create
Speaker 12: arts and there's participants in the movies, it's a holding
Speaker 12: a mirror. And I think George saw himself. My guess
Speaker 12: would be by seeing how it changed after the film.
Speaker 12: I think he recognized and maybe he had been unaware
Speaker 12: of what he really had been doing. Like who I mean,
Speaker 12: we end up sometimes making mistake in our own bubbles
Speaker 12: and not even realizing. And so I noticed too that
Speaker 12: the nationalism was scaled back, that this was not anymore
Speaker 12: longer about sort of an American hero, but there is
Speaker 12: still a lot of American trappings.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's July fourth.
Speaker 12: He has pulled off this extraordinary coup of equating hot
Speaker 12: dog eating with patriots as a bund July fourth. Yeah,
Speaker 12: in everyone's mind in the country, it's challenging to dial
Speaker 12: back nationalism on July fourth. Kobe Ashi is also extremely charismatic.
Speaker 1: As it wrought.
Speaker 3: So Kobe had and has great personal style. Loved what
Speaker 3: he did. The world was his oyster.
Speaker 12: He captured the American imagination in an extraordinary way, and
Speaker 12: he broke through the culture in the early ought that
Speaker 12: was phenomenal, and there was no.
Speaker 3: Other character who was doing it.
Speaker 12: I agree with you that without Kobe there would not
Speaker 12: have been a compelling main character.
Speaker 3: I understood that I wanted to explore satiety.
Speaker 12: But I didn't know at the beginning that it would
Speaker 12: become a reflection about America. And that was something that
Speaker 12: we really discovered along the way and really kind of
Speaker 12: deep into editing.
Speaker 1: And we're Joey and Kobe happy with the way their
Speaker 1: stories were presented. I felt like, you're very empathetic and
Speaker 1: respectful towards both contestants.
Speaker 3: I think they felt that.
Speaker 12: I think that they each hid their grapes, which probably
Speaker 12: sure let me know that I was doing okay. Kobe
Speaker 12: wanted more granular information about why he was met at George.
Speaker 12: I think Joey felt a little that the film was
Speaker 12: more about Kobe than him. Besides these complaints, I think
Speaker 12: in general they felt that they were happy with it.
Speaker 3: That they were captured.
Speaker 1: I heard that Shay wasn't thrilled about his portrayal in
Speaker 1: the thirty for thirty And looking at other people of
Speaker 1: George Shay's ilk who are narrative creators, and you know,
Speaker 1: seeing the camera turned towards them, I feel like it
Speaker 1: almost always creates this tension because all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: this narrative that you have had deeply within your control
Speaker 1: for however many decades is being challenged in a way
Speaker 1: that wouldn't have previously been possible.
Speaker 3: That's interesting.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 12: When we started the film, George began doing sort of
Speaker 12: what he did in you know, Spinning, and was presenting
Speaker 12: himself as an entertaining character with sort of the tropes
Speaker 12: that have been in the press before. And I and
Speaker 12: we had to stop, and I said, George, for us
Speaker 12: to make this film, if we're going to make it,
Speaker 12: I need you to be you. We need the real story.
Speaker 12: And he agreed, You're right. He was not happy with
Speaker 12: his portrayal. And I also didn't know where it would
Speaker 12: lead when we began. We went through I don't know
Speaker 12: thousands of hours of footage and really looked and we
Speaker 12: had to assess was Cobe accurate or was he not?
Speaker 12: You know, there was a journalistic piece to it in
Speaker 12: addition to character centered storytelling, and so I think the
Speaker 12: films for itself that it was never it was just
Speaker 12: sort of what we found, you know. He said that
Speaker 12: Joey's I think Joey broke his heart, and I think
Speaker 12: I said, no, I think maybe.
Speaker 3: You broke his heart.
Speaker 12: And that was not a planned I wanted to address it.
Speaker 12: And when he said it, that became a moment for me,
Speaker 12: you know, so he had an opportunity to reflect in
Speaker 12: that moment. I think he said that he wished Kobe
Speaker 12: had come to him. That's a hard thing to ask someone, right,
Speaker 12: who doesn't speak the language, she doesn't really understand the culture,
Speaker 12: who at that point was.
Speaker 1: Mad, who was still kind of functioning as your employee
Speaker 1: at that point too.
Speaker 12: Right at the thirty thousand foot level, right, the nature
Speaker 12: of human relationships is often rupture and repair. We all
Speaker 12: transgress and we all have to apologize and make up
Speaker 12: for things we do. So so it's hard for an employee,
Speaker 12: someone who's a contract employee where you're the primary source
Speaker 12: of income, be able to communicate that, to know how
Speaker 12: to communicate it effectively when you don't speak the language,
Speaker 12: and I think that Kobe did not fully understand the
Speaker 12: nuance of George's language, so that if you read the words,
Speaker 12: or you have the words translated, he's an alchemist, or
Speaker 12: he's a poet, He's this all of like those extraordinary things. Suddenly,
Speaker 12: if you don't know the language and understand the nuance,
Speaker 12: you have one idea of who you are, and George
Speaker 12: really had another idea of who Kobyashi was. And I
Speaker 12: don't think Kobe understood until the very end, ten years later,
Speaker 12: that George did not take this year as a sport
Speaker 12: and even his language wasn't was that superlative.
Speaker 3: I could be wrong. I don't think he fully grasped that.
Speaker 3: I think not to say that he was duped.
Speaker 12: I just think that coming from a culture so different
Speaker 12: than ours, I don't think he could get the nuance,
Speaker 12: especially as a non English speaker.
Speaker 1: It also makes sense why Joey was so appealing, because
Speaker 1: Joey takes it super seriously.
Speaker 3: Too, Like right, they both took it super seriously.
Speaker 12: And I think Colbe understood that there was an element
Speaker 12: of fun and that people find fun.
Speaker 3: And I mean, he's not a dope.
Speaker 1: He's eating against a bear like that whole.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a.
Speaker 12: Very very smart He's a smart guy, So it's not
Speaker 12: a question of intellect. It was a question of I
Speaker 12: think of sophistication and attunement to American culture. And I
Speaker 12: think that's why the hurt was so bad too. When
Speaker 12: the xenophobic remarks started to come. I think it came
Speaker 12: out of the blue for him, like, why would anybody
Speaker 12: say anything mean to a guy who eats hot talks.
Speaker 1: Which is a very fair question when George Shay was
Speaker 1: making those kinds of comments, and how permissible xenophobia was
Speaker 1: in the US in the two thousands, Let's just say,
Speaker 1: I guess it was like a particular kind of tone
Speaker 1: to it.
Speaker 12: It had a particular tone, Yes, absolutely, like Post nine
Speaker 12: to eleven. It had a particular time. But I don't
Speaker 12: think our xenophobic nature has changed. I mean, look at
Speaker 12: the what's being said about the border. It's insane. Xenophobia
Speaker 12: absolutely continuing, and it has changed, it's probably.
Speaker 1: Worse based on the years of reporting, of interviewing, of
Speaker 1: making media around this sport.
Speaker 3: What is this a reflection of?
Speaker 12: I can tell you this that I think that deep,
Speaker 12: deep that I don't know if it's an American narrative
Speaker 12: as much as it is a human narrative in the
Speaker 12: sense that every single culture has very strict mores around food,
Speaker 12: and you realize that there's a real joy in breaking
Speaker 12: all the rules around food, and there was a real
Speaker 12: joy about breaking rules around human capacity. We look at
Speaker 12: great athletes and we're in awe and there's something on
Speaker 12: inspired about how much these guys can eat, and also
Speaker 12: the real pleasure of the rule breaking. I think there's
Speaker 12: something so naughty about it at its core. So I
Speaker 12: think that's part of the passion of hot dogs more so,
Speaker 12: I think than sort of the Americana identification, and I
Speaker 12: think that's an overlay, but I think it's audiness. Every
Speaker 12: culture also has food competitions, yeah, form or another, So
Speaker 12: I don't know that's what I think.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much to Nicole Go stream thirty for thirty,
Speaker 1: The good, the bad, the hungry right fucking now. When
Speaker 1: it comes to the Netflix special surrounding Chestnut and Kobayashi,
Speaker 1: I have to admit, while it was thrilling to see
Speaker 1: the two matched up again after so long and genuinely
Speaker 1: devastating boiler alert, to watch Kobe Louse as his decades
Speaker 1: long supporters looked on, there was this feeling of corporatism
Speaker 1: where sensationalism used to be. The hosts of the event,
Speaker 1: Rob Wriggle and Nikki Bella read the teleprompter and spoke
Speaker 1: to the viewers and their presence folk to clearly defined
Speaker 1: Netflix audiences, Briggle to their conservative fans and possibly some
Speaker 1: comedy nerds. Nicki Bella to the WWE contingency that they
Speaker 1: were trying to court. It was an event unto itself
Speaker 1: and an ad for something else, the algorithm reminding you
Speaker 1: to come back soon, because remember, Netflix has a plan here,
Speaker 1: just as they released the Vince McMahon Takedown docuseries just
Speaker 1: a couple months before starting to broadcast WWE RAW. They're
Speaker 1: connecting the dots with the creative overlap between professional eating
Speaker 1: and professional wrestling and using the broadcast to promote their
Speaker 1: own product. That's why we have WWE star Nicki Bella
Speaker 1: co hosting the event. That's why there are appearances from
Speaker 1: wrestler Ray Mysterio and he presents Joey with the championship belt.
Speaker 1: That's why they're broadcasting Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson on
Speaker 1: their platform. In November, even though their Vince McMahon docuseries
Speaker 1: criticizes McMahon for platforming Mike Tyson shortly after he was
Speaker 1: found guilty of raping a teenager in the nineties. Netflix
Speaker 1: is no better, but in a broader sense outside of
Speaker 1: the WWE. It's why Netflix is both sidesing the fucking
Speaker 1: Menendez Brothers. It's a strategy one that doesn't require a
Speaker 1: visible ring master taking sides. It's a way to take
Speaker 1: any side that a viewer will pay to engage with.
Speaker 1: There are no values to an algorithm, even when the
Speaker 1: creatives and producers, and particularly Joey and Kobe are very,
Speaker 1: very passionate and smart about what they're doing. This isn't
Speaker 1: a criticism of the producers and the creatives on this
Speaker 1: broadcast at all. It's the algorithm that is powering it.
Speaker 1: So is Netflix Synergy the pt Barnum of today, Not exactly,
Speaker 1: but I do think the algorithm that guides its programming,
Speaker 1: a guide clearly and logically follows in this broadcast is
Speaker 1: the new faithless ringmaster behind a lot of what we consume.
Speaker 1: Because at the end of the day, Barnum, McMahon and
Speaker 1: Shay deserve to be taken to task, and I'm grateful
Speaker 1: to live in a culture where that conversation can actually
Speaker 1: be had. But they're fallible, fallible in a way that
Speaker 1: an opaque algorithm is not a face that needs to
Speaker 1: present you with the person to hate and not just
Speaker 1: wordlessly serve it in front of you. And if you're
Speaker 1: listening to this show, you're probably eating it right up
Speaker 1: with me. At the time of this recording, Joey Chestnut
Speaker 1: is the world's champion eater. Takio Kobayashi broke his personal
Speaker 1: best score on the Netflix broadcast and remains the first
Speaker 1: eating celebrity who introduced the technique, the training, and the
Speaker 1: persona that has come to define American professional eating. And
Speaker 1: he's really and truly retired, and so the and narrative
Speaker 1: of Joey and Kobe Your sixteenth minute ends now. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for listening. Obviously, this topic is my
Speaker 1: absolute addiction, and I hope that this angle brought something
Speaker 1: new for you to hear more about my journey to
Speaker 1: Vegas to see Joey and Kobe face off one more time.
Speaker 1: Tune in Thursday for a minisode. And finally, here's a
Speaker 1: curse cameo. I ordered from George Shay in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: see you on Thursday, Ladies.
Speaker 9: And gentlemen of America, citizens of the world, We now
Speaker 9: address Joey, a man of incredible strength, a warrior king
Speaker 9: who stands with a land meets the horizon.
Speaker 14: Steadfast and unshakable, upon whose shoulders God has arranged the
Speaker 14: flesh of an archangel, a man of immense wisdom, who,
Speaker 14: while he is faced by a bunk and challenges, will
Speaker 14: stand on the ramparts of victory, overlooking a sea of truth.
Speaker 9: Because he will never stop, and he will never stand down.
Speaker 6: And he will never submit, and he will never surrender
Speaker 6: until his bones are cracked and splintered and scrape like
Speaker 6: chalk on pavement, until the very dome of Heaven collapses
Speaker 6: and the black avalanche of space pours down around us.
Speaker 6: He will fight on why Because the rock on which
Speaker 6: he stands is not a rock. It is the United
Speaker 6: States of America.
Speaker 13: And now it is go time.
Speaker 1: It is go time.
Speaker 6: Time, it is go no go, Lock and load and
Speaker 6: love him and leave him smoking. If you got them,
Speaker 6: see you want to see us seeing on the either
Speaker 6: side time time this condition red all hands on deck,
Speaker 6: batten down the hatches, belly up to the bar, do
Speaker 6: it too It feel the burn fire and the whole.
Speaker 9: Hold the phone, Go big or go home.
Speaker 5: Game on game day, game face. Never say never, Never
Speaker 5: say die, Never give up, Put up a shut up,
Speaker 5: shape up a ship out, show me the money, make
Speaker 5: my day.
Speaker 10: Good night.
Speaker 5: We wake me when it's over.
Speaker 1: It's go time.
Speaker 5: Homer from Jamie.
Speaker 1: Sixteenth Minute is a production of fool Zone Media and
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio. It is written, hosted, and produced by me,
Speaker 1: Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: Themes and Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Speaker 1: Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is
Speaker 1: from Grant Crater and Head. Shout outs to our dog
Speaker 1: producer Anderson, my Kat's Flee and Casper and my pet
Speaker 1: Rockberg who'll outli of us all Bye