Podcast appearances and mentions of abraham josephine riesman

Let's get ready to RUMBBBLLLEEEEE! Hang on to your seats, friends, as we dive into Abraham Josephine Riesman's fantastic book, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, all about the world of professional wrestling and the man who formed WWE into what it is today.Pop culture pairings: The Wrestler (Amazon Prime), The Iron Claw (Hulu, Max)

American wrestling, which most notably revolves around the WWE brand, owes much of its success to the influential presence of the McMahons - Vince McMahon, most of all. There is no doubt about the influence he had on wrestling and the way he turned the likes of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, John Cena, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, and Hulk Hogan into household names, as well as his role in creating the blueprint for pay-per-view programming. However, in the wake of the legacy he has left behind, are allegations - a dirty laundry list that includes sexual misconduct and lawsuits claiming his abuse of power. For more than four decades, he was both an executive and a performer in his own show, acting as the diabolical "Mr. McMahon." But to what extent does the fiction intertwine or blur into reality?Tune in to Episode 64 of The Great Fail to hear the story. Special thanks to Abraham Josephine Riesman for her contributions to this segment.For show notes and sources, please visit: www.thegreatfail.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joel Anderson, Stefan Fatsis, and Josh Levin discuss whether the NBA All-Star Game is fixable. They also talk about whether Fanatics and Nike are destroying the sports uniform. Finally, writer Abraham Josephine Riesman joins to explain the allegations against wrestling impresario Vince McMahon and why they matter.   All-Star Game (3:16): What can the league do to revive what used to be a showcase event?   Uniforms (22:53): Baseball players say their new clothes are the pits. What happened?   McMahon (42:37): What's next for pro wrestling and the man who's controlled it for decades?   Afterball (1:01:43): Josh on the time the mayor of San Francisco insulted the 49ers' backup quarterback. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joel Anderson, Stefan Fatsis, and Josh Levin discuss whether the NBA All-Star Game is fixable. They also talk about whether Fanatics and Nike are destroying the sports uniform. Finally, writer Abraham Josephine Riesman joins to explain the allegations against wrestling impresario Vince McMahon and why they matter.   All-Star Game (3:16): What can the league do to revive what used to be a showcase event?   Uniforms (22:53): Baseball players say their new clothes are the pits. What happened?   McMahon (42:37): What's next for pro wrestling and the man who's controlled it for decades?   Afterball (1:01:43): Josh on the time the mayor of San Francisco insulted the 49ers' backup quarterback. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joel Anderson, Stefan Fatsis, and Josh Levin discuss whether the NBA All-Star Game is fixable. They also talk about whether Fanatics and Nike are destroying the sports uniform. Finally, writer Abraham Josephine Riesman joins to explain the allegations against wrestling impresario Vince McMahon and why they matter.   All-Star Game (3:16): What can the league do to revive what used to be a showcase event?   Uniforms (22:53): Baseball players say their new clothes are the pits. What happened?   McMahon (42:37): What's next for pro wrestling and the man who's controlled it for decades?   Afterball (1:01:43): Josh on the time the mayor of San Francisco insulted the 49ers' backup quarterback. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.insurgentspod.comAbraham Josephine Riesman joins us again to talk about Vince McMahon's departure from WWE after new horrifying allegations emerge about his behavior. We look at it through wrestling's unique position as a “sports entertainment” enterprise and how top figures who still remain at the organization try to use that same premise to deflect or distract from th…

CONTENT WARNING: This segment contains mentions of sexual assault and sexual violence. If you or a loved one has experienced sexual assault, you are not alone. Call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673. Dan speaks with Abraham Josephine Riesman, the author of "Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America," about the awful details in the new lawsuit brought against Vince McMahon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are reflecting on a year of reading by tallying up the books that we just can't stop thinking about. Two professional readers – Miwa Messer, host of Barnes & Noble's book podcast Poured Over, and Andrew Limbong, host of NPR's Book of the Day podcast – join us to share their best of the year lists. Here are the books mentioned in the episode. For pictures, links and more details, head to our website! Andrew's picks:‘Landscapes' by Christine Lai‘Poverty by America' by Matthew Desmond‘Roaming' by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki‘Ringmaster' by Abraham Josephine RiesmanMiwa's picks:‘Loot' by Tania James‘Ordinary Notes' by Christina Sharpe‘Open Throat' by Henry Hoke‘Chain Gang All-Stars' by Nana Kwame Adjei-BrenyahGreta's picks:‘The Vaster Wilds' by Lauren Groff‘The Country of the Blind' by Andrew Leland‘The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi' by Shannon Chakraborty‘Same Bed Different Dreams' by Ed ParkListener picks: ‘The Fragile Threads of Power' by V.E. Schwab‘Shrines of Gaiety' by Kate Atkinson‘Land of Milk and Honey' by C Pam Zhang ‘In the Lives of Puppets' by TJ Klune‘Monsters' by Claire Dederer‘Black River Orchard' by Chuck Wendig ]]>

We're sharing another episode of a podcast we think you might like. It's called The Closer and it's hosted by executive producer of The New Bazaar, Aimee Keane. In each episode, Aimee speaks to dealmakers and insiders about landmark financial deals that have changed our lives in some way. In this episode, Aimee speaks to writer Abraham Josephine Riesman about Vince McMahon's influential dealmaking career. McMahon took over his father's regional wrestling business in the 1980s, and made it into an international media and entertainment juggernaut valued at billions of dollars. This is the story of how McMahon cleverly bulldozed competitors, acquired rivals and capitalized on the public's hatred of his tactics. Find The Closer here or by searching for the show on your podcast app of choice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Disney has released a new documentary which myself and many others have criticized for regurgitating a mythical version of history that extolls Stan Lee as sole creator of the Marvel universe. To talk more about the documentary, I'm joined by Elana Levin, who has written widely on comics and hosts the Graphic Policy podcast– an excellent forum that takes up the intersection of politics and popular culture.On this episode of The Time of Monsters, beyond rebutting the documentary, Elana and I talk about the true history of Marvel, with particular emphasis on the contribution of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, the artists who were also (at a minimum) co-writers of the stories credited to Lee. In the discussion, Elana recommends some excellent resources for more information including Abraham Josephine Riesman's biography of Lee and Kate Willaert's fascinating tumblr page, Kirby Without Words.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Disney has released a new documentary which myself and many others have criticized for regurgitating a mythical version of history that extolls Stan Lee as sole creator of the Marvel universe. To talk more about the documentary, I'm joined by Elana Levin, who has written widely on comics and hosts the Graphic Policy podcast– an excellent forum that takes up the intersection of politics and popular culture.On this episode of The Time of Monsters, beyond rebutting the documentary, Elana and I talk about the true history of Marvel, with particular emphasis on the contribution of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, the artists who were also (at a minimum) co-writers of the stories credited to Lee. In the discussion, Elana recommends some excellent resources for more information including Abraham Josephine Riesman's biography of Lee and Kate Willaert's fascinating tumblr page, Kirby Without Words.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Vince McMahon took over his father's regional wrestling business in the 1980s, and made it into an international media and entertainment juggernaut valued at billions of dollars. This is the story of how McMahon cleverly bulldozed competitors, acquired rivals and capitalized on the public's hatred of his tactics, as told by writer Abraham Josephine Riesman. The Closer is a Project Brazen production. Subscribe to Brazen+ on Apple Podcasts or at brazen.fm/plus and get exclusive bonus episodes for The Closer and all our shows, as well as ad-free listening and early access to new podcasts.  For more fearless storytelling visit brazen.fm, home to all our podcasts, documentaries and newsletters. At Brazen, we show you how the world really works – from espionage and corruption to deal-making and organised crime, we'll take you inside stories from hidden worlds.

Hello, wrestling fans! It's time for Episode #71 of Shut Up and Wrestle, with Brian R. Solomon! This week, my guest is Abraham Josephine Riesman, author of the brand-new book, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America. It's a fascinating look into the history and psyche of the most important and polarizing figure in … Continue reading Episode 72: Abraham Josephine Riesman → The post Episode 72: Abraham Josephine Riesman appeared first on Shut Up And Wrestle with Brian Solomon.

You've heard us talk all about Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America; now it's time to talk to the author! Abraham Josephine "Josie" Riesman joins us to discuss writing a book that aims to be the definitive Vince biography, as well as how it feels to be an outsider reporting on pro wrestling.

Jeff is joined by Abraham Josephine Riesman to talk about her new book Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America.    Buy the book Follow Josie on Twitter   Subscribe on Youtube  Follow Jeff on Twitter Email us! goodmorningcomrade.com Twitter Facebook Leave a review! 5 stars and say something nice to spread the word about the show!

This week on The Treatment, Elvis welcomes writer Abraham Josephine Riesman, author of “True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee” and her latest, “Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America.” Next, director Benjamin Millepied joins to talk about his feature film debut, an adaptation of “Carmen.” And for The Treat, songwriting power couple Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez talk about their inspirations on the page and in song.

A new biography about the most important man in pro wrestling, Vince McMahon, debuted on the New York Times Bestsellers list. Author Abraham Josephine Riesman talks to Off the Bottom Rope about the book. For more top stories, visit www.GVWire.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GVWire/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/gvwire Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gvwire/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gv-wire TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gvwire --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/gvwire/support

We have shirts available! Buy our original Tights and Fights logo shirt on Topatoco for the sale price of $14. And buy our brand new WrestleMania shirt to celebrate Ice Cream Christmas all year long. This week we're joined by Abraham Josephine Riesman. She's researched the life of Vince McMahon as much as anyone ever has.In preparation for latest project, she rekindled a love of wrestling that has been dorman for years.She joins Hal, Danielle and Lindsey to discuss her fandom, neo Kayfabe and the upcoming coronation of a new World Heavyweight Champion.The Main Event: The Life of Vince McMahonJosie's new book is RingMaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America. It is a massive biography on Vince and a look at how WWF/E expanded and influenced American politics and culture.The Three Count:Julian put over “Mrs. Davis” which features a certain famous wrestling figure.Danielle put over Trinity's return to wrestling.Lindsey put over Kieren Culkin on Hot ones.Hal put over the the evil of Hot Ones.Hosted by Hal Lublin, Danielle Radford, and Lindsey KelkProduced by Julian Burrell for Maximum Fun.The music for our new promo is provided by Incompetech.comIf you want to talk about more wrestling throughout the week be sure to join us on Facebook and @TightsFights on Twitter and Instagram. PLUS! Check out our Tights and Fights Discord!If you liked the show, please share it with your friends and be sure to leave us a quick review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get podcasts.Plus our Original T-Shirt and Ice Cream Christmas shirt are available now!

Abraham Josephine Riesman, author of The New York Times bestselling book, Ringmaster, joins Tim and JVL to talk WWE wrestling and the latest attacks on trans Americans from the right. Plus, Tim and JVL talk the $5 million Mike Lindell has the pay for his disproven election fraud claims. Watch the gang record this episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0u9_tuy9V4 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This time around, Eden is joined by Abraham Josephine “Josie” Riesman, NYT-bestselling authoress of True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, and much else besides. The two dive into Philip K. Dick's legacy, investigating his positions on Judaism, his religious exegesis, what we can learn from his writings about the current (and sorry) state of American culture, our perceptions of our world around us, transness, and more! Seriously, more.

This week on The Treatment, Elvis welcomes actor and screenwriter Owen Wilson, who's starring in the comedy “Paint,” about a laconic public television host with a painting program. Next, writer Scott Z. Burns joins to talk about his ambitious and star-studded AppleTV+ series “Extrapolations,” about the wide-ranging effects of climate change. And for The Treat, writer Abraham Josephine Riesman talks about the dystopian alternative future in her favorite Philip K. Dick novel.

Abraham Josephine Riesman, the author of “Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America,” recounts how the WWE went through an aggressive expansion in the 1980s, including in St. Louis.

A new book by Abraham Josephine Riesman focuses on the professional wrestling promoter's rise to power and touches on how St. Louis had a key role in building the WWE.

SLANDERTOWN is a podcast that dives into First Amendment slugfests. No beef too small, no lawsuit too petty. EPISODE 6: Dan and Tanvi discuss how recent developments in the Dominion v Fox News lawsuit reveal the fakery at the heart of Fox News. The closest analogue: pro wrestling! Joining the crew is Abraham Josephine Riesman, bestselling author of Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, who explains the concept of "kayfabe" and how it applies to Donald Trump and Fox News.

Michael Rothfeld joins the show to discuss Donald Trump's arrest. Mike gives us the latest on on Lionel Messi. Abraham Josephine Riesman discusses her new book "RINGMASTER: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ben, Max and Ryan sift through the chaos in both the DC and Marvel Cinematic Universes then recap our Best Albums of the 90's March Madness Tournament Bracket (9:00) and make their own cases for who should have won while dissecting the messy legacies of Eminem and Blink-182. (40:00) Author Abraham Josephine Riesman joins the show to discuss her new book about the life and legacy of Vince McMahon and what the future of the WWE looks like heading into this weekend's Wrestlemania. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/xthevideostorex/message

Families of the victims prepare for release of final report into Nova Scotia mass shooting. Michael Scott,(partner, Patterson Law and lawyer representing several families of the victims of the Nova Scotia mass shooting) joins us to talk about it. Abraham Josephine Riesman (author of Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America) joins us to discuss their new book on Vince McMahon. This week on Journo Corner, Tristin Hopper (columnist and reporter at National Post) joins us to talk all about random attacks and safety concerns, Danielle Smith under fire again and Crocs: love or loathe? We talk all things Crocs, starting with what's behind the enduring popularity of Crocs with Matt Powell (founder, Spurwink River (a retail consulting firm) and Are Crocs bad for your feet with Dr. Jenny Ling (Vancouver podiatrist). Rebeka Breder (animal rights lawyer) joins us to chat about BC looking to change laws for pet custody disputes, and Myra van Otterloo (Nanaimo-based helicopter pilot) speaks about her 15-day Moroccan rally across the Sahara Desert.

Our first ever guest Abraham Josephine Riesman makes her triumphant return to Comics and Chronic to talk about her new book Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America. What would Abraham's gimmick and finisher be called? What was Jake's bar mitzvah theme? When did Abraham start watching wrestling? Were there any fears or risks in writing a biography on Vince McMahon? Who were her favorite wrestlers? How do we feel about The Rock? Why were old wrestling PPVs so hard to find on VHS? What was so intriguing about the Greater Power storyline? How was Stephanie McMahon introduced in the WWE? Is Vince McMahon the dark side of Taylor Swift? Why did Vince see himself more as the Stone Cold character than he did Mr. McMahon? What does Jake think of AEW? Does Vince McMahon take responsibility for wrestlers deaths? Does Vince McMahon care if you hate him? How do Donald Trump and Vince McMahon intersect? How/Why is Vince a father figure to so many wrestlers? How does Bret Hart feel about Vince McMahon and The Montreal Screwjob today? Why do so many people from working class backgrounds gravitate towards wrestling? Does Abraham use her nepo baby powers for good? Was Vince McMahon interviewed for this book? What was it like for Anthony working at WWE? Who go to ride in Vince's limo and private jet? What compliment did Vince McMahon give Anthony? What weird rules do you have to follow around Vince? Will there be a sequel to Ringmaster? Who is the prime McMahon? What happens when WWE crosses paths with Howard Stern? What is kayfabe and neo-kayfabe? Are The Dudley Boyz actually brothers? Was The Montreal Screwjob the biggest moment in wrestling history? Was it the end of the world? What was the moment superheroes died? What Monday Night RAW moment with Val Venis confused the hell out of Anthony as a kid? How is wrestling like The Illusionist? Did we believe Kane was actually burned? How is wrestling like comic books? What famous musician is the subject of Abraham's next book? https://www.ringmasterthebook.com/ Check out our first interview with Abraham: https://www.comicsandchronic.com/ep-4-abraham-riesman-and-true/ https://abrahamriesman.com/ Check out our website: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.comicsandchronic.com/⁠⁠⁠ New episodes every THURSDAY Follow us on social media! Instagram // Twitter // TikTok : @comicsnchronic YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UC45vP6pBHZk9rZi_2X3VkzQ E-mail: comicsnchronicpodcast@gmail.com Cody Twitter: @Cody_Cannon Instagram: @walaka_cannon TikTok: @codywalakacannon Jake Instagram: @jakefhaha Anthony Instagram // Twitter // TikTok : @mrtonynacho YouTube: youtube.com/nachocomedy

Abraham Josephine Riesman is a journalist and essayist, and author of the new book, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America.  Brought to you as always by Kayfabe News Find us here: BONN PARK MEDIA

The world of pro wrestling used to be sold as real. Viewers were told that the fights, the rivalries, and the storylines were all real-life, otherwise known as a phenomenon called kayfabe. Then, former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Vince McMahon turned that on its head. In this episode, author Abraham Josephine Riesman, who recently wrote a biography on McMahon titled Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, tells The New Abnormal co-host Andy Levy how a manipulation strategy McMahon used made WWE what it is today (and help to deregulate it) and how Trump came to use that same technique to keep his fanbase coming back. Also in this episode: Riesman goes deeper into how McMahon's strategy was able to leak into the world of politics, the history of McMahon and Trump's friendship, and if there's truth behind one of the biggest quote from her book: “Vince McMahon is the closest thing to a friend Trump has.” Plus! Andy and co-host Danielle Moodie talk about the Republican war on oat and almond milk and make the case that if TikTok goes down, Meta and Twitter should go with it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This "Paltrocast" features interviews with Underoath's Spencer Chamberlain, composer Gustavo Santaolla, Survival Guide's Agent M and author Abraham Josephine Riesman. Theme song by Steve Schiltz.

By Walt HickeyWelcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.This week, I spoke to Abraham Josephine Riesman who wrote the explosive new book out this week Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America. I have been looking to this one for a while, I was a massive fan of her 2021 book True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee.The subject matter of this one will be of interest not just to wrestling fans but among anyone who has felt the reverberations across pop culture, sports and politics of one extremely complicated family and their very influential “sports entertainment” business.The book is out this week and can be found wherever books are sold. Riesman can be found at her website and on Twitter. This interview has been condensed and edited.Josie, thank you so much for coming on.Hey, I'm so glad to be back. Fire away.You are out with the new book Ringmaster this week. I have been looking forward to this all year, honestly, since I heard you announced it. Folks might know you from your Stan Lee biography. Both of these stories are about complicated men who worked in the entertainment industry and how it kind of destroyed them, I guess. What drew you to Vince McMahon?I was a teenage wrestling fan from the ages of about 13 to 16. I was very obsessively involved in Vince McMahon's product, the World Wrestling Federation, as it was known then. And three years isn't all that long a period of time in adult human years, but in teenager years, those are a century each. It was a time when I was very impressionable, and wrestling made a big impression on me. And after I gave up on it around 2001, I stopped watching for like 20 years. And then when I was done with my biography of Stan Lee, True Believer, I had to come up with something else to write. And I was having a conversation with my wonderful spouse, who ended up being my frontline editor on this, but was not at the time, S.I. Rosenbaum, and we were just chatting about what could the next book be.And one of us said, what about a biography of Vince McMahon? Now, she'd reported on wrestling in the past as a local news reporter. Not on the WWF, but on the wrestling world, so she was familiar with him. And I obviously was familiar with him, had a lot of distinctive memories of him, had some knowledge of his real life. But it was, as is true of most people's knowledge of Vince McMahon's real life, ill-informed, because he's very good at deliberately altering your perception of him. So it just seemed like a natural idea. He is this amazing individual whose story had not really been told in the particular way that I wanted to tell it.It's a fascinating business story, it's a fascinating cultural story, and we'll kind of touch on each of those elements in a bit. I guess to give folks a little perspective who might not be totally familiar with wrestling, what role does Vince McMahon play in the evolution of it, and what it's become today versus what it was maybe 50 years ago?Sure, yeah. Vince is the singular man of professional wrestling right now. There's no one more powerful or influential than him, both in the present and also in the recent past. Of the living people in wrestling, no one has had more of an influence than Vince McMahon. He took over the company from his father, who was a wrestling promoter, like his father before him, in 1982 and 1983. He, over the course of that year, purchased the company from his father and some minority shareholders.And after that, Vince sort of went on a war of conquest. Up until then, wrestling had been this largely regional phenomenon. You had regional territories where local bosses, who operated not unlike mob bosses, would dictate what pro wrestling was in that geographic territory. And it was an oligarchy. It wasn't a democracy, but it was an oligarchy. It was not unlike the English nobility circa Magna Carta, where it's like it could have been the beginnings of democracy, but democracy it wasn't. But the fact was that power was more diffuse than it is now. Because Vince went on this little mission to take over wrestling in America and Canada, and he did entirely.It's not exactly a monopoly because there are small other promotions, there have been. Now there's a pretty big rival promotion AEW, but for about 20 years there, from 2001 until 2020 or so, Vince was essentially unopposed in the world of professional wrestling. And the whole art form has been changed by that fact, by the fact that this one person has so much outsized influence on how it has evolved in the past for decades.And it really was a conquest. Again, he cajoled and destroyed and won over and allied with—And bought, don't forget bought. The big thing was he would flood the zone with money and tell the top talent at any given territory, come over to my shop and you'll get paid more. And it's a very punishing industry financially, so unsurprisingly, a lot of people said yes. And similarly, he would just buy TV slots in rival territories and start broadcasting his show in syndication. One of the WWF's employees spoke to a reporter in the early ‘80s or mid-‘80s and said that Vince was executing manifest destiny. Used that actual phrase. It was an apt comparison, let's say that.Yeah, and I think that I would love to hear your view on how he changed wrestling to reflect him, because we're going to get in a second to how wrestling kind of changed a lot of the world around it; but whether it was the body building league that he backed for a bit, or whether it was the distinct styles in wrestling, I suppose I'd love your view on, what does the Vince McMahon wrestling world look like that's different than perhaps what came before?The Vince McMahon world of wrestling for one thing, this is perhaps the most important thing, it no longer claims to be a real sport. This was perhaps, I mean, there's a lot that Vince reshaped, but a lot of it's sort of technical. It'll be like, oh, well he started doing this kind of camera thing. It's a vast accumulation of little things that result in an altered tapestry. But the big historic, world historic break, was Vince in the mid-‘80s started pushing to get his business deregulated so he didn't have to have state athletic committees overlooking health and safety and levying taxes. And his big strategy for that was not in public, but behind the scenes in legislation sessions and in lawsuits. He and Linda, his wife, and their underlings would say, ‘Don't worry, this is all fake. You don't need to regulate this like a sport, because it ain't a sport. It's just like the Harlem Globe Trotters or the circus.' That was the comparison they always made.And it's unclear whether Vince ever intended to make that all that public. Perhaps it was inevitable that it would've been, but he was kind of caught off guard in 1989 when, after four or five years of this deregulation effort and after some lawsuits that he or Linda had testified in in which they'd said all that, it finally got reported.The New York Times ran a big story called, "Now It Can Be Told, All These Wrestlers Are All Just Having Fun." And it was about how the WWF's deregulation campaign, especially in New Jersey, had resulted in them going on the record and saying in legislation and in legal proceedings that wrestling was fake. And Vince was kind of caught off guard, because he was not intending that to be a big public New York Times story, but he'd already laid the groundwork, whether or not it was his intention. That effort also combined with something that was very public, which is that he started referring to his product in the mid-‘80s as sports entertainment, not wrestling. It was sports entertainment. And that change, that shift toward acknowledging wrestling's fakeness in a grand way, was just a sea change. It resulted in a lot of enormous upheaval.Yeah. I suppose I'm interested in, then, how that deregulation and that upheaval affected not just folks who worked for him, but the product as well as the human beings who worked for him. So much of your book is about the relationships between Vince and various different wrestlers. If he's the only game in town and if the state's not paying attention, that lead to some significant negative impacts for a lot of people, and a couple significant positive impacts for another group. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?Yeah. In the absence of anybody telling Vince what to do in a meaningful way, he was able to execute a lot of very abusive business tactics towards his workers. Wrestlers are not employees, they are independent contractors, they don't have health insurance provided by WWE, as it's known now, and they are in this very low-paying profession compared to other athletic events of similar spectacle and notability.Like, you have these people who are every bit the athletes that a basketball player or a football player might be, but they get paid vastly less, and have so few job protections and no voice, because again, there's no collective bargaining. And so that has manifested itself in a lot of death and destruction. Not to put it too bluntly, but I could go on all day about all the people who've been affected in that way.Just a few off the top of my head, Owen Hart, a wrestler himself, but also the younger brother of the very famous wrestler, Bret Hart, Owen Hart died in the ring. He was doing a zip line stunt — well, technically it was called a descender stunt, but that's getting technical. He was doing this stunt where he was flying in from the rafters at a pay-per-view event, and Vince had changed up who was managing that stunt, and the person who did it was allegedly somewhat incompetent, and the botched stunt led to him falling 70 feet and hitting the ropes and then falling into the ring, and he died mere minutes later, and the show went on. That was the thing about Vince, was it any other athletic event, if one of the players died, I can't imagine that the game would've continued. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe there's some sports example that I'm not aware of, but it would be completely obscene and impossible to imagine a sporting event continuing after one of the players died.But that's exactly what happened with Owen Hart. Vince told them to keep the show going, and the arena crowd — it was 1999, so we don't have as much internet penetration in a remote location — but you had all these people in the arena who therefore didn't know whether Owen was dead or not, thought maybe it was all part of the act, because they weren't told. And they cheered their heads off for the rest of the show thinking maybe that was all part of the show. That's just one example. There are countless people who've died young because of injuries or head trauma or steroid use, drug use, any number of things that just go completely unchecked or largely unchecked in wrestling, because it's just not a regulated or unionized industry.The steroid component was a huge part of it as well, too.Yeah, back in the ‘90s, it's actually kind of interesting. The steroid scandal that the WWF found itself in was arguably held up as a bigger deal than the concurrent scandals about rape. Vince was accused in that same period in the early ‘90s, and then especially in 1992 of raping a female employee in 1986. He was accused of actively knowing and looking the other way about child rape in the WWF among the so-called ring boys, these sort of underage boys who were hired to do odd jobs. And the steroid thing, and there were a bunch of other sexual misconduct allegations, but those were two of the big ones.The steroid thing was always held up as a bigger deal than any of the other stuff. It was the steroid allegations, and those were specifically about distributing and pushing steroids on the wrestlers, which was a bit of an abstraction because Vince didn't have to actively come tell any wrestlers to do steroids, they knew that that's what the boss expected of them.So trying to pin it on a specific like, oh, Vince said to this one wrestler, ‘You need to do steroids today, and here they are,' that was going to be very hard to do. So it's very odd to look back on the steroid trial — well, the steroid scandal is what led to the federal trial that Vince faced in 1994 — and yet you look back on it and the steroid allegations are easily the least interesting, or at least scandalous or least harmful in many ways; even though steroids are very harmful, they're nothing compared to rape.And it was, I wonder why the media attention went so much to the steroids. I think a lot of it just had to do with the war on drugs. There was just a general moral panic about about chemical substances, especially their use among young people. And I'm not saying young people should be doing anabolic steroids to bulk up, that's not what I'm saying at all. But I think it maybe got held up as a bigger deal than some of the allegations that may now seem more serious. Because it was part of this larger American phenomenon.It was also likely more obvious on its face, as well as more easy to report on?Yeah, you're absolutely right, but that doesn't necessarily preclude media from making hay out of something just because it's harder to prove, especially when it's something salacious and tabloidy like sexual misconduct. But I'm sure that was part of it, yes. With the steroid thing, you just have to turn on your TV and you see all the evidence you need by looking at the Ultimate Warrior and Hulk Hogan, as opposed to some of the other stuff.I want to talk about some of the really cool reporting and new information that you broke in this, and just kind of things that I got out of your book that I have never seen or really kind of felt before.And I got to say, one theme that I think you keep coming back to is just that how Vince is able to do this is that he appears to be preternaturally charismatic. And you have a couple scenes in the book, I recall one where I think he's talking to Bret Hart, where he's just able to win somebody who is technically in conflict with him, fundamentally over to his position. There was also the excerpt this week that ran about a negotiation between him and one of those ring boys.Could you talk a little bit about, I guess, his character and his skills, and what his talents are?Vince is an enormously charismatic individual, which is interesting because he wasn't as a child, this was not necessarily a phenomenon for his entire life. I spoke to many people who knew him when he was young before he got involved in the wrestling industry, and they all said he was kind of unremarkable. They liked him, but he was not president of the class, and oftentimes he wasn't even doing any extracurriculars.So at some point, either it flowers or he learns it, and by the time he meets Bret Hart, Vince McMahon walks into a room and everybody looks at him. I've never been in a room other than an arena with Vince McMahon. I've never interviewed him. But everyone I know who has said they've been in the same room as him, they all say it's like gravity, you just can't escape the pole of wanting to be around this sort of uncanny dude.It's not just that he's charismatic, he's also just physically odd to look at, and that's appropriate because Vince and his father both really understood that the human mind is easily hackable in one very particular way, which is that humans don't know what to do with uncanny-looking other humans. If you see somebody who's really big, just enormous, you're going to pay attention to them.And if you can win them over after they started paying attention to that person, then you've got it made. And Vince is an enormous guy, not as much, he's older, but in his prime, and his prime lasted well into his 60s, he was just a bulked out dude. It's something that everyone remarked on, even before he started wrestling or doing anything as a real character, when he was just an announcer. I was talking to people who watched him in the ‘70s when he was an announcer starting out, and everyone was like, ‘Yeah, we would watch and we'd be like, “Why is the announcer so jacked? Is he going to wrestle at some point? What? Why is that happening?”'Whether that's intentional or not, it's effective. People are weirded out by Vince McMahon, and that leads them to pay more attention to Vince McMahon, and that's something he used to his advantage a lot.That's fascinating. I think that wrestling has lended itself rather well to memes; a lot of Vince's actual strategy with recruiting and retaining wrestlers was to find folks who had a very distinctive look. If you look at who has gone mainstream in Hollywood from wrestling, they're gents with a very specific aesthetic. Do you want to speak to some of that?Yeah, I mean the people who have broken out of wrestling and become people that your mom might recognize are John Cena, Hulk Hogan, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, these extremely charismatic, extremely large, chiseled, slightly odd-looking men, and very few of wrestlers have actually achieved that level of mainstream prominence.But the ones who have have been very successful. I mean, John Cena is probably the most popular wrestler who's still sort of on the roster. He occasionally wrestles for them still, but all these past stars who are still in Vince's fold, they all know where their bread is buttered, and they don't piss off Vince, they have had a lot of influence.Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson's star is falling at this moment thanks to Black Adam, but that doesn't mean he's not one of the more recognizable humans on the planet. He could still run for president, he keeps teasing that he might.Jesse Ventura, Jesse “The Body” Ventura, was not created by Vince initially, but he became a megastar thanks to Vince, and Jesse was the governor of Minnesota, and now is an influential conspiracy theorist. It's like these people come at the world from odd angles, and end up taking it in even odder angles.Yes. Can you think of any recent examples, perhaps from recent American politics, that could potentially back that point up as well?Yeah, right. Well, I don't know why I didn't talk about that, but yeah, there's a particular member of the WWE Hall of Fame who happens to have been the 45th president of the United States: Donald Trump. Vince and Trump are very close, they've known each other since the ‘80s.Trump was the host of two WrestleManias in the ‘80s, and then would appear at wrestling events and class the joint up. And then eventually, most notably, he had this whole storyline where he was a character as himself, and he was in a rivalry with Vince McMahon, and they had the Battle of the Billionaires at WrestleMania in 2007. And it was a real interesting spectacle, in retrospect. I mean at the time people ate it up just because it was a reality star and another reality star essentially being goofy on television, but it ended up having a lot of significance.I really think that experience of doing that storyline was transformative for Donald Trump, because Trump wasn't a guy who worked rallies as of 2007, really, that was not his milieu. And he's not somebody who likes watching politician speeches, it's not like he's learning how to work a rally from watching George H.W. Bush deliver the State of the Union or something; he learned from wrestling.I say he has known Vince since the ‘80s. He's been watching McMahon Family Wrestling since he was a child. We have people on the record talking about him watching. We have people on the record talking about watching Vince Sr.'s wrestling show, that's Vince's dad, in the ‘50s, in the ‘60s, and he was really influenced by that.Donald Trump loves wrestling, he has watched it for a very long time, and I think the experience of doing that storyline and watching all that wrestling, but especially doing the storyline, really taught him how to work a crowd into a fervor by tossing them little bits of unspeakable truth, and big chunks of completely outrageous lies, and delivering them all with the exact same level of commitment. And the crowd ate it up, and I think that was a taste of something that he then craved more of.Fascinating. So again, the book is called Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and The Unmaking of America.Josie, I want to kind of back out a little bit and talk about not only this book, but your previous book, because again, I mentioned in the beginning how there's a lot of connective tissue there, and how these are folks who have a chip on their shoulder, they're not in the mainstream, and they really lust for the mainstream, and then that fundamentally changes the way that they view the world, the people around them, and the folks who work for them.Just kind of take a step back, what kind of connective tissue do you see between Vince McMahon and Stan Lee, two men who are fundamentally instrumental for the current state of pop culture?For a huge cog of what happens in culture now and politics, as well.They were both men who created a character based on themselves but not themselves, and then lost themselves in that character. That's the most obvious comparison.Stan Lee, Stan Lee was born Stanley Martin Lieber and became this character named Stan Lee. And eventually that was all that was left, was the Stan Lee character, at least in most of his interactions with people outside of his inner circle. And it was a prison for him in many ways. It was, by the end, very different from how he acted with his intimates. And with Vince as well, Vince, when he became a character in the wrestling as a supreme super villain, he became Mr. McMahon, that was the official branded name for his character. And Mr. McMahon was seemingly at least an extrapolation of Vince, and I think in a lot of ways it was an extrapolation of Vince, but Vince has always maintained, ‘Oh, Mr. McMahon isn't me. Mr. McMahon is based on all the people I hated when I was growing up.'And we didn't really have time to get into it in this interview, but my whole big fat theory about that is, he's talking about his father, Vince Sr., who he never says anything mean about, but I can't imagine he doesn't have deeply conflicted feelings, even if he's not really in touch with them, about this man who abandoned him for the first 12 years of his life, and then was cold to him for the entire rest of the time they knew each other.We can go there. I mean again, he did kind of run off and join the circus, so to speak, when his father reentered his life.Yes. When he met his father at 12, he threw himself into wrestling. He became a huge wrestling mark. He was not into wrestling as a child up until then, but when he found out that his father had this whole other life doing that, he wanted it, and he threw himself into it. He became his own wrestling promoter in high school.Vince had never talked about this, but I uncovered it. In high school when he was at military school in Virginia for two years, he would stage wrestling shows in the school gymnasium. This was his beginning, and he's never talked about that because it interferes with the story he's tried to foster of himself as a juvenile delinquent, rather than somebody who was doing fights only for show.I guess to kind of add on to that, you had a hell of a time reporting this out. It was a lot of records; covering a guy as slippery as somebody who has a wrestling character can be difficult in its own right. What went into some of the reporting?A lot. I mean, it was a lot of going through documents and a lot of cold calling, not a lot of travel, because this was a pandemic book for the most part. I did go to North Carolina. That was my one priority: All the other travel was optional, but I had to go to North Carolina as soon as there was a vaccine. And lo and behold, once there, I went down there and I found a lot of stuff.It was very interesting. You found this total counternarrative to what Vince had told everybody about his youth. And yeah, it was a wide array of things, lots of interviews, I talked to more than 150 people, building off of other secondary sources. You know, how does anybody write a book?Well, so the book is called Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America. Josie, do you want to tell folks where they can find it?Look for me at abrahamriesman.com, or you can look just at the book, at ringmasterthebook.com. Get full access to Numlock News at www.numlock.com/subscribe

What can professional wrestling and its largest figurehead tell us about our social and political moment? Turns out - a lot! Author Abraham Josephine Riesman returns to Serious Fun for an in-depth discussion about her new book "Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America". Riesman breaks down McMahon, his empire, his connections to politics and business, and how his contributions to pro wrestling have created a new weighted form of synthetic reality she calls "neokayfabe" that permeates our social, political, journalistic, and media lives. SHOW NOTES: Learn more about the book at: https://www.ringmasterthebook.com Riesman's article on the Book of Job for Slate is here: https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/03/job-torah-story-despair-alternative-war-democracy-climate-apocalypse.html

If you hate Vince McMahon, then maybe you'll buy a tee-shirt for his rival. And that's a great outcome for the WWE. Abraham Josephine Riesman is the author of “Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America.” Ricky Mulvey caught up with Riesman to discuss:  - Vince McMahon's early life as a “pretty nice kid”, and the parts of his story he doesn't want wrestling fans to know. - WWE's potential deal with the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund. - The Montreal Screwjob, and the groundwork for the modern WWE. - A story about Saddam Hussein's side job as a wrestling promoter, Andre the Giant, and a golden gun.  Company discussed: WWE Host: Ricky Mulvey Guest: Abraham Josephine Riesman Engineer: Dan Boyd

Abraham Josephine Riesman is a journalist who writes often for New York and is the author of True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee. Her second book, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, will be published in March. “You're sure that there's a level of unreality, but you're not sure that it's all fake. There's stuff there that seems either plausible or sometimes you go ‘there's no way you could fake that.' And sometimes you're right, and a lot of times you're somewhere in the middle. It's not as easily distinguished as saying this is fact and this is fiction, this was scripted and this was improvised, whatever. You can't make those distinctions easily, and one of the things I sort of hope comes out of the book—if it has any impact at all—is to try to get us past this false binary of true and false.” Show notes: @abrahamjoseph abrahamriesman.com Riesman on Longform Riesman's New York Magazine archive 16:00 "She Was WWE's First Female Referee. She Says Vince McMahon Raped Her." (New York Magazine • June 2022) 27:00 "There Is No Dignity in This Kind of America" (Jamelle Bouie • New York Times • Feb 2023) 28:00 "My Grandfather the Zionist" (New York Magazine • June 2021) 37:00 "How Los Bros Hernandez Stayed Punk for 40 Years with their Epic Comic-Book Saga, Love and Rockets" (GQ • Nov 2022) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

HBO's new dystopian TV series THE LAST OF US is an adaptation of a dystopian video game that was inspired in part by Alfonso Cuarón's dystopian film CHILDREN OF MEN, a strikingly timely 2006 thriller whose consideration of cynicism and hope at the world's end has only grown more timely in the intervening years. So we're returning to the source of this cross-medium journey through apocalyptic hellscapes, in a conversation about how and why Cuarón's film continues to resonate, from its efficient worldbuilding and nuanced politics to its well-wrought humor and visceral filmmaking style. Plus, an alternate pairing suggestion in Feedback inspires some live brainstorming of a hypothetical COCAINE BEAR episode. Please share your comments, thoughts, and questions about CHILDREN OF MEN, THE LAST OF US, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email to comments@nextpictureshow.net, or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730. Outro music: “Bless the Beasts and Children” by the Carpenters  Works Cited • “Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men Is a Dystopian Masterpiece,” by Abraham Josephine Riesman (vulture.com) • “Scenic Routes: Children of Men,” by Mike D'Angelo (avclub.com) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices