Radiolab - La Mancha Screwjob

Episode Date: May 20, 2022

All the world’s a stage. Or, sometimes it feels that way, especially these days. In this episode, originally aired in 2015, we push through the fourth wall, pierce the spandex-ed heart of professional wrestling, and travel 400 years into the past to unmask our obsession with authenticity and our desire to walk the line between reality and fantasy. Thanks to Nick Hakim for the use of his song "The Light".  Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab today.     Radiolab is on YouTube! Catch up with new episodes and hear classics from our archive. Plus, find other cool things we did in the past — like miniseries, music videos, short films and animations, behind-the-scenes features, Radiolab live shows, and more. Take a look, explore and subscribe!  

Wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC. Hey, it's Latif. This is Radio Lab. A few nights ago, I was watching television. I'm not gonna tell you what show. Fine, I will tell you what show. It was Station 11 on HBO, it's great show. It's a show about a fictional global pandemic.

And there's this scene in the first episode where it's not even a major scene or anything, but there's a doctor, an ER doctor. She exits the room and goes into a hall in the hospital and she takes off her mask and then she starts coughing. She has a coughing fit. And just for a split second, I got very mad because I was a doctor in a hospital,

not wearing a mask, coughing. And then I just got confused because I was like, wait, wait a second, when did they shoot this? Was this shot during the actual global pandemic? not wearing a mask, coughing. And then I just got confused, because I was like, wait, wait a second, when did they shoot this? Was this shot during the actual global pandemic? I just got confused in a way, like my brain short circuited. And the place it took me to,

exactly to this old radio live episode, from 2015, called La Mancha Screw Job, which is about this very thing, the way that kind of reality sort of pokes into fiction and changes the way we see it, which is like, I feel like COVID has completely changed the way that I see characters relate to each other in space on a screen. Anyway, this episode is from before all that, but I think, yeah, I could not help but think about it, and I wanted to play for all of you. So enjoy Hello, is this Jonathan? Yes, it is hello. This is Chad from from New York and Robert my co-host is here as well Yes, hi, hi, Chad. How are you? How are you doing? Good? Okay. How are you doing? Very good. Thank you

Very good. So this is Jonathan my name is Jonathan Goodwin and Jonathan We've been watching your harrowing videos all morning. Oh dear. I'm so sorry He's an escape artist. You all right? Sort of no Jonathan kind of show for a while on the Discovery Channel. It was called one way out Yeah, but he actually started out the very first thing that I. Just doing these home videos that you can see on YouTube. Oh, and welcome to Jonathan's Escapes.

And they are nothing like if he escape artist video we have ever seen. Are we trying to escape here? I mean it. I need to talk. Just as an example, the first one we saw, it starts with he is in his bedroom, he's wearing jeans, no shirt. It's the room, it's messy, the whole thing is super awkward. And then...

Dad! He calls in his dad. Oh, what are you doing? I'm going to escape from you. Who walks in, looking, by the way, totally confused. Can we, uh, tie my wrist? To the... Jonathan then convinces him to tie his wrists to the frame of his bed. And I'm tied to the bed, bare chested. All right, nice. Right back down.

And I tied a bed sheet above my bed about three feet above my bed, spread out. Can you come around here and pick up this iron? Then he has his dad grab a hot iron, and he puts it on the bed sheet, which is hovering just a few feet above his bare chest. And I have to escape before it burns through and hits me in the chest.

Oh, this one, this one, because the eye's going through. Now, the thing about Jonathan's escapes is he doesn't have a knife up his sleeves, a trick rope. This is real. And because it's real, sometimes I escape and sometimes I don't. And in that instance, I didn't't actually. You didn't? No. Wait, so you did not escape meaning you were on the bare chest and the iron fell through the sheet above you onto your chest? Onto my chest. What? How bad was it? It was a very healthy second degree burn. I had to go to the emergency room. The doctor thought I had some sort of weird fetish.

No, no, no, I'm an escape artist, honestly. I think you do. I think you have a very weird fetish. And I think your father should also be brought there to a close and careful examination. Well, in that instance, I think he genuinely believed that I was going to escape. I'm always wondering about your dad

when watching these videos. Does he know? I have more than wondering. How prepped is your dad? What's about to unfold? Not at all. Not at all. I will bring him in and say on camera for the first time. And then douse my legs with petrol as well. You really want to do this? All right, this is what we're going to do. And in half the time, Jonathan will fail to escape from the elaborate situation he's put himself into, and he will have his eyebrows torn off.

Or land in a bathtub full of thumbtacks? Or a scorpion will sting the inside of his mouth? Yeah, yeah. Maybe your problem is You would like to experience what everybody else wants to avoid experiencing like I wonder what it would like to be burned alive I wonder what like to have my nipples ripped off. I mean these are not Things that I wake up myself. Is it is it? I wonder but he's he's the thing though I think that we do want to know those things. I think that's the reason why we go to movies and watch action films, because we do have a fascination with stuff like that.

No, I'm happy to have you have the power. I'm not wake up thinking, I want to have the experience. I want to watch you have, no, I don't even want to watch you have. Well, I watch and I'm completely riveted and I'm wondering why, which I think is connected to why you would do it in the face. First question. It just flies in the face of everything that you've ever seen an escape artist do. Jonathan says, takes someone like David Blaine.

There you've got a guy who's probably standing on a post, surrounded by flames. The flames are getting higher and higher. It's super dramatic. But in those kind of situations. They always escape and just in the nick of time, and they take what should be an incredibly dramatic art form and make it kind of a cliche. But because Jonathan's escapes are totally real,

you really have no idea what's gonna happen. And the reason why I want to do it is because I think I would enjoy watching it, because I think it's entertaining. And unfortunately, I'm the guy who had the idea for it. Do you know what I mean? It's like, nobody else is going to do this, so I better do it so it happens. Huh.

I'm Jed Abel-Mran. I'm Robert Krollwich. And today, on Radio Lab, we're going to take a cue from Jonathan. We are going to, in our own way, get real. Is this a really... ...a real... ...a real... And we're going to start with a story that's about pretty much the least real thing I can think

of. All right, hey guys, sorry. We're here now. Peter, I'm Simon. Hey, the mecha. Simon, how are you, man? I'm doing well in yourself. Good.

Okay, who's who? Peter is a DJ. Peter Rosenberg from Hot 97, Simon Adler, as a journalist. Arpal Andrew Moran from The New Yorker is also in the room and Robert Nyer in the back. Good, well, we have all gathered here today to talk about the wonderful world of professional wrestling. I'm the Iron Alpha!

My favorite world. I'm the most famous one off the top. So yes, we're gonna talk about professional wrestling for the first half of the show. We realize there's probably a lot of you out there listening right now who are like Seriously guys? There are people like, oh, you're 35 years old. You love wrestling? It's you know, I get this a lot if I'm tweeting about it a lot. I get tweets that go you know it's fake, right?

It's like well, do I write you that when you tweet about your favorite movie? It's entertainment. The awesome thing about wrestling is is that there are these random things that are a little bit real. And sometimes those moments of realness can just be like, Po! They can change everything. Now if you're like me and you grew up in the 80s, you might remember wrestling as like, you know, Hulk Hogan versus Andre, the giant, these epic matchups. They were kind of great, but also sort of ridiculous and cartoonish. Well, according to Peter Rosenberg,

there was a moment where wrestling started to sort of tinker with reality and a much more nuanced and fascinating way. In fact, you could argue that pro wrestling became a re-instance of the Baroque movement of the 16th century by the postmodern twist. You could, I pro wrestling became a re-instance of the Baroque movement of the 16th century by the postmodern twist. You get to, I know people who would. You're gonna meet them. I'm Chad.

I'm Robert. This is Radio Lab. And according to Peter, this whole thing is where we're gonna start. This whole thing goes back to this moment called the Montreal screwdriver. The Montreal screwdriver was above anything else that it ever happened or that will ever, probably ever happen again because it was utter reality, transpiring right there in the ring. I mean, it was when real life just came

and tore a hole in the fiction. That guy you just heard is David Schumacher. I write about professional wrestling for Grantland. And the guy you're about to hear is journalist Simon Adler. He will take the story from here. Okay, so the moment in question really centers around this one guy named Brett. Brett!

Brett, the hitman, heart. Brett Hart is seen by many to be the greatest in-ring performer of all time. He was one of the good guys. I am the best there is, the best there was, and the best there was. In the business they call him a baby face. Is that what you call the good guys? A good guy in wrestling is a baby face. He was my favorite wrestler as a kid.

I didn't understand why at the time, but now I do. It's because he did everything so well. And in that era, the mid to late 80s when I fell in love with him, so many guys were just big and halting and a little bit clumsy, but Brett did the kind of work that you could show to someone who's never watched wrestling. I think they could see the art, and I think they could see how it's like ballet. Or a million other art forms. What he means, and you can kind of see this when you watch old Brett Hart matches on YouTube. Oh, I don't like that. I'm not a Brett gut.

He's gliding through the air, bouncing off the mat, off the ropes. He tells stories brilliantly within the way he executes a match. The wrestling is scripted, but there's a lot of improv going on. There are these set beats. He knew how to take those moments and in that improv make you think, oh shoot, he's about to lose and then... Oh, he did it!

We've seen history made! He was a natural born wrestler. You know, his father was a legendary wrestler. His brother Owen. Legendary wrestler. He comes from this Canadian wrestling royalty. Me as a kid growing up, I had the ability to had the fortune to watch these varied wrestling styles and techniques and stuff.

That's Bret Hart in an interview in 2000 on Fresh Air. And he says that some of his earliest memories as a kid were these massive dudes showing up to his house and hanging out in his basement with his dad. You know, even then my dad was, you know, say 60. Who is teaching them how to be wrestlers? He would pull on these old woey tights and then he would wrestle with these dad. You know, even then my dad was, you know, say 60. Who's teaching them how to be wrestlers? He would pull on these old woe tights and then he would wrestle with these guys and he would literally put them in wrestling holds, these submission wrestling holds, which is his obsession and he would torture these big huge football players for hours and they would scream literally these high-pitched screams.

It was terrifying. I'd be upstairs in the room above it. And as I got older, I would go down and actually venture into the room and sit on the bench and watch. And he sometimes these wrestlers would run out when my dad finally let them go. They'd actually run out tear out of the doorway and outside. Sometimes in the snow and run out in their bare feet and you wouldn't even see them again. I mean, there's a legendary, so many legendary stories about the heart family, but you, you know, my favorite among many is the bear that lived in their backyard during summers because at the time, wrestling a bear

was a thing that would actually happen from time to time. No, really. And Brett tells a story in his book about, you know, just sitting there and letting the bear lick his toes. I mean, like, this is a life that he lived and he was so ingrained in him. So, in the early 80s, Brett was working for his dad's company, Up in Canada.

And while that's going on in Canada, there's this guy Vince McMahon, back in the US, who is building kind of this wrestling empire. And basically, he's buying up all of these small promoters from across the country, and eventually goes up into Canada, and buys out Brett's dad's company. I bought it in 1984. They paid him a certain amount of money to stop running. Like, just to kind of go out of business, and then they took on some of his better wrestlers at the time Which was myself and I had a couple of brother-in-laws and shortly thereafter The WWF comes under fire

Hulk Hogan another world wrestling federation stars have taken the offensive against accusations that many have been steroid Abuser like man's monster mentality led to widespread steroid abuse in the world wrestling federation. So there's this big steroid crisis Vince has to deal with all of this litigation and he kind of needs to rebrand his organization. He needs a new good guy, a new champion, a new babyface. And he looks to bread for that. For a couple of reasons.

According to David Schumick, one is that he's a traditionalist. Sort of a throwback to an earlier time. Two, he's not that big so when you see him you don't think... Stereoids. That guy's definitely, yeah, Roy Dredge. And so he saw all that in Bret Hart. So during the 90s Vince makes Bret a really big star. He's got it!

He's got it! We're gonna do something! We're gonna do something! We're gonna do something! The new face of the company. vince makes Brett a really big star. He's got it! He's got it! We're gonna do it again! The new face of the company. I mean, he was on The Simpsons. He was a really, really big star. You know, there are people who criticize Brett for saying he wasn't that fun or he took himself too seriously, but he was a serious worker.

He took wrestling very seriously. Pulling myself really fighting hard to actually survive and come out of the wrestling profession I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I. At the time, a major rivalry was starting between the WWF. That is Vince McMahon's company. And the WCW, which was Ted Turner's company. Ted Turner, multi-cajillionaire. And one of his big tactics is, I'm just gonna start buying all of the wrestlers from the WWF, from Vince McMahon's organization.

So he's offering their more money, he's offering them longer contracts. And he was just like flooding it with money to steal all the stars from WWF. And then in late 1996, Brett got an offer, Turner really went in for the kill. From WCW, that was huge.

$2.8 million. I mean, I have to show us a common sense, you know, and first of all, you have to do this right for your family. But I mean, how much money do you need sometimes? I find myself torn between trying to do the right thing for my family, and at the same time, you show my loyalty. That's a clip of Brett talking in a documentary

that was being filmed at the time. Called wrestling with shadows, which is fantastic. The filmmaker, Paul J. was nice enough to let us play some clips. In any case, Brett gets this offer, and he's got kind of this terrible decision to make. Because Vince gave him a lot. You know, he really gave him his life.

And initially, Brett decides there's no way I'm going to leave. You know, I think my relationship with Vince McMahon was always sort of like a father. And I sort of saw myself, if I left, it would have been a little bit like leaving my dad, especially when the chips are down. He really did see Vince as a father figure. So Brett goes to Vince and basically says, convinced me to stay. They went back and forth. There was a conversation about him signing a long-term deal, a 20-year deal with WWF, not

for as much money, but for guaranteed security. Vince said, I can't afford to pay you that. Just Dr. Vince. Did you? No. In the documentary, Brett and his wife, they're sitting at a kitchen table. What do you see?

He goes, nobody wants Brett Hart more than Vince McMahon. Then why is he letting you go? He can't afford to compete with Turner. He was the Turner's hellbent. I'm trying to put him out of business. I got to think about everything. I got to think about everything. I got to think about everything. Just see what makes sense. A choir maybe.

Can we cut this off now for a little while? Ultimately, it became clear that Brett would have to go take the money. I can't help but feel really heartbroken and disappointed that I left this company. So, this really gets to the heart of it. Once Brett decides he's going to leave, they have to figure out how, how are they going to make his exit. This is really the pivotal question behind all of this. Yeah, you know, it's a very, very delicate situation. That's Vincere So, and this was sort of his problem to solve because he worked for Vince McMahon. You know, you could say I was his

right-hand man because I was writing the show. He was part of the team that scripted who would win, who would lose, how it would happen. You know, I mean, I was, you know, literally putting the show on paper, you know, once a week. Wait, why is this a hard question? I mean, can you just pick up and leave? Well, because he's the champion. He has the belt. The physical belt, the giant golden, like, belt buckle thing. And that belt is the symbol of the belt. The physical belt, the giant golden belt buckle thing. And that belt is the symbol of the company. And everybody in it, everybody working behind the scenes, everybody

who was trying to support their family, that belt was a representation of all that. The worst thing that could happen is your champion walking away with the belt. Drawing up to the new company, holding up the championship from the old company. Where they could just defile it if they wanted to. That was not an option for Vince McMahon. This isn't a perfect comparison, but the closest thing I've come up to in my mind is it would be like LeBron James quitting his contract with Nike and then showing up in an adidas commercial and taking a piss into a pair of Nike. So you know Vince, at the end of the day, he just had to get that belt off of Brett.

So, their initial thought, their first plan, was probably the simplest option. There was a match coming up, this big event, a pay-per-view event, in Montreal, Brett being the champion of the company, he should just lose to the number two guy in the company. Sean Michaels. Vince loved Sean. I mean, really thought Sean was a Megastar, which he was right about. Clearly Sean was next in line, so they pitched this idea to Brett, and Brett was like, I can't do that. I can't. The one, he thinks Sean's an idiot.

He's got this prima don of personality. I mean, he thinks he's better than everyone else. And it's something very arrogant and obnoxious about him. Because he was he was a showman. He would hump the ring. Just like do ridiculous things and like to Brett Sean was the triumph of style over substance. Also you're asking Brett to wrap up his career in the WWE with a loss in Montreal in Canada. Where he is a national hero. I described Revenge as as just to blow my brains out. It would be the same. What you're asking me to do.

From a character standpoint, that's what I would be doing. Brett the hitman heart would blow his brains out. The whole thing's been hard. Day of the match still nothing has been decided as to how the match is going to end. Brett is backstage and eventually he goes to Vince to have a conversation. The documentary crew is filming all of this and at this point Vince says, no I don't want any cameras in here, Get those out of here. And so Fred actually ends up wearing a wire to document the conversation that's about to happen.

I never ever want to leave here with any kind of bad feeling, but this week has been a bad week for me. I feel kind of betrayed a little bit. Well, I go to a little bit. And again, all we're talking about really is to Turner. That's what's coming between you and me. That's all. Can't tell you, I appreciate you

to have always been for everything you've done. I didn't want to leave with any problems. I actually didn't want to leave at all. And then at the point where there was no other choice but to go. The way this whole thing has been depicted, it's really hard for me, as a hero here to come up short this weekend. What would you want to do today then? I'm open to new things. I think what I'd like to do is get through today.

I think tomorrow I should just go in and do my speech. So Brett suggests that this ends in a disqualification. Usually what that means is something called a schmoss. Typically in a schmoss, the ring is just flooded with a bunch of wrestlers and chaos ensues. The referee usually is thrown out of the ring. And it ends in some sort of draw. Brett would then appear on Monday night, raw the next day, and turn over the belt. That is what he planned on doing. So that way he could turn over the belt but not lose?

Exactly. And eventually Vince says, okay fine. I'm opening. I'm opening. Like I said before, I'm determined to just climb up the right way. Coming up, it all goes wrong. Radio Lab will continue in a moment. Hey folks, this is Simon Adler. I'm a senior producer here at Radio Lab.

But back when we initially made this episode, you're listening to, I was actually an intern here. Anyhow, I was just coming here to say thank you. Our team and the show honestly could not exist without listener support. Each episode requires time and work from so many people. For the Le Mansche screwdriver, we worked with radio DJs, wrestling historians, Servante scholars, New Yorker writers, fact checkers.

And then of course, there are all the folks who work behind the scenes to bring this to you. Like David Gable, our administrative assistant, who you hear on the show from time to time, or Ariane Wack, our technical producer who does the mixing to make sure everything sounds just right. There are so many of us and all of us are always pitching into bringing the absolute

best stories we can to you. And again, thank you. Because without you, we would not exist. Which brings me to maybe the actual reason I'm talking to you. Because we have this new membership program called the lab. And when you sign up as a member for it, you allow us to continue to work hard over long periods of time, sometimes more than a year to do extensive reporting on things both important and, in the case of professional wrestling, maybe not so important. But then also, of course, make it sound great.

And the cool thing about the lab is you get stuff in exchange, like exclusive merchandise or invitations to spend time with us or these little audio tidbits that don't make it into the show. It's a cool sort of extra way for us to say thank you and to bring you behind the scenes of the work that you make possible here. Now if you're already a lab member, we can't thank you enough.

And if you're not a member, you can join at radiolab.org-join. Alright folks, can't wait to meet y'all. Thanks for listening. This is Radio Lab. Let's get back to Simon Adler's story of the moment that changed wrestling forever. You'll also hear Peter Rosenberg from Hot 97 and just a moment as well. He's the first voice we'll hear. but we'll pick up the action with a big match. The moment we've all been waiting for. And now Milton Bradley's electronic karate fighters presents the 1997 Survivor Series. Okay, here we go. So Survivor Series 1997 Montreal. Where tonight it will finally be settled! Who is the man?

Oh the drama. So around 9.20pm, 20,000 people in the stands, countless television screens across the country. Sean Michaels comes out. I know I'm sexy. And he comes out singing his own theme song. I think I'm cute. I know I'm sexy.

Xinging karaoke style? It's pre-recorded of him singing. That's an approach. He's got his hair in a ponytail. He's wearing his trademark black spandex pants with hearts all over them. Like, he is the manifestation of everything that Brett despises. And then, Out comes Brett Hart, waving a Canadian flag.

And what an ovation! Where are they? 21! And he walks into the ring, he gets in, takes off the championship belt, hands it to the ref, and before the match even officially begins. Look out!

And Sean Michaels says, and Sean Michaels has gone the way since any time! Sean flies at Brett and just starts wailing. Sean and Brett they're going at each other with a sort of like real ferocity. Pretty quick they're outside the ring. Brett picks up Sean, chucks him over the security railing into the crown. Then there's this moment where Brett picks Sean up so that Sean's legs are straight up in the air and then Brett just slams him on his back. In all of this is scripted. Yeah, everything I know about it is like, they're following the narrative arc,

but like they know, okay, we're gonna fight her outside the ring for a while and then X, Y, Z will happen. And so eventually, Brett throws Sean back into the ring. And then you get to a point in the match which feels very early in the match. We're Brett climbs onto the turnbuckle, which is the corner post of the ring. He gets up on top of that, catapults himself off the turnbuckle through the air towards Sean Michaels. Super dramatic, he's kind of floating in the air there for a moment. And then...

Oh, the fluticles just pull the referee right in front of the hitman. What Shawn does right before Brett is about to come and hit him. He pulls the referee in between Brett and Shawn, a human shield of sorts. Brett hits the referee, the referee hits Shawn, and all three men are lying on the mat. Is that a disqualification? It might be if they could get up and call it...

Oh, here we are. Right, this could be the moment. But no. Before the referee can get up, Sean gets up. Walks over to Brett. And then, Sean puts Brett in the sharpshooter, which is Brett's signature finishing move. Are you going to take me, Brett Hart, with a sharpshooter? Yes, he is! Basically, Sean pretzels up Brett's legs and sits. Are you kidding me?

And within seconds, the bell rings. And within seconds, the bell rings. Sean slides out of the ring, grabs the belt, runs to the back, takes off. Things work a certain way in wrestling matches, right? Like, no one gets the first pin, the second a match starts, and no one puts someone in submission hold, and they instantly submit, especially not Bret Hart. It just did not appear like the time the match was supposed to end. The crowd is kind of shocked. It's strangely quiet.

And there's this one moment where the camera zooms in on Bret's face. Well, he's lying just down on the mat looking up. And there is just this bizarre, amazing look on his face. Confusion is an emotion that, amazing look on his face. Confusion is an emotion that almost never exists in pro wrestling. There's the cartoon confusion of like, everything's crazy, and your arms are going like wild, your eyeballs pop out of your head, but real confusion is one of the most compelling emotions of all. That's what you see on his face in its most pure form.

Genuine confusion. And then anger. Brett gets up, puts his arms on the rope, looks down, sees Vincent Man, and spits right in Vincent's face. He then proceeds to get out of the ring and basically destroy Everything inside. He goes over to the announcer's table starts ripping it apart. He destroys the monitors throws the headphones out into the crowd. He goes pretty nuts and And in maybe the moment that truly made you go what is happening. Brett gets back into the ring. He takes his hand in the air and draws with his finger in the air as big as he can. W C W which is where he was going to be

leaving to go work. W C W and keeps doing that walking across the range of signaling W C W to the crowd. doing that walking across the range is signaling W C W to the crowd. After the match, Brett heads back into the locker room looking for Vince. Brett tells the cameras to shut off. And then to make a long story short, he clocks Vince in the face, knocks him out. Now the WWF has a real problem on their hands. Vince has a black eye, and the fourth wall has just been torn down, and they need to figure out how or if they're going to build it back up. And the next day, this again was the head writer at the time, Vince Russo. We had a television taping right after that, you know, you have

Raw on Monday, you know, you do your pay-per-view on Sunday, you have Raw on Monday. So they all had a little room to discuss their options. And Vince says that everybody in that room, their first knee jerk reaction is, well, we're gonna sweep this under the rug and not even talk about it. I mean, that that was almost just assumed. Because you have to understand there's this old principle in wrestling called K-Fape. And basically what this is is this law of the wrestling god passed down since time eternal, that says you don't talk about the fact that it's fake. Everyone knows that it's scripted and that

it's fake, but you damn well better not mention that ever. Why? Because everybody has a better time when everyone is under the spell of it. Oh. And I was like, wait a minute. Vince is walking around with a black eye. The boys has a black eye and one of the boys punched them in the face. Russo is saying, I understand K-Fave, but we have to address this.

We can't not acknowledge this. And that doesn't have to be a problem. That can be an opportunity for us. I mean, I hate to say this, but it doesn't get any better than this. Russo says this discussion got very heated. It was passion-filled. And in the end, nobody really knew what Vince McMahon was going to do.

By the time Bret Hartz Depp center stays for his match up with Sean, I'm eventually Vince McMahon decides I'm going to break with K-Fake. Now keep in mind, he's always been the owner of the organization, but very few people actually knew that. Two most fans of professional wrestling, he was just an announcer. That night, on his own TV show, he comes out, not as Vince McMahon, the ringside announcer, but as Vince McMahon, the owner of the company. Let's cut right to the chase.

Seven days ago, with a survivor series, did you or did you not screw Bret Hart? Some would say, I screwed Bret Hart. Bret Hart would definitely tell you, I screwed him. I'll look at it from a different standpoint. I'll look at it from a standpoint of, the referee did not screw Bret Hart. Sean Michael certainly did not screw Bret Hart.

Nor did Vince McMahon screw Bret Hart. I truly believe that Bret Hart screwed Bret Hart. And you can look in the mirror and know that. I'm sharing some parts of the country right now. There's a collective groan that you orchestrated the situation. And the fact that people are not going to understand what you mean by Bret Hart screwed Bret Hart. So what do you mean by that? There's a time-hon a tradition in the wrestling business. If someone is leaving, they show the

right amount of respect to the WWF superstars in this case who helped make you that superstar. You show the proper respect to the organization that helped you become who you are today. It's a time-honored tradition and Bret Hart didn't want to honor that tradition. Nonetheless, that was Bret's decision. Bret screwed Bret. And everything changed from that point on. And according to Peter, after the Montreal Screwjob and after this speech, the writers of the WWF started blurring the line on a different level. Vince McMahon, the chairman of the WWE...

Ladies and gentlemen, he became Mr. McMahon! Mr. McMahon, the character, the number one villain in the company. You're fine! There were no more ridiculous, stupid, unbelievable childish, ignorant, immature characters. Every character we had was basically an extension of themselves. Costume! Costume! Costume!

You know, Stone Cold Steve Austin was Steve Austin 1,000 times magnified. Who knew some man? You know, the rock was Rocky My Via 100 times magnified. And as a result, that was the beginning of the biggest boom in the history of the wrestling business. As far as business goes, this was huge for the WWF and Vince McMahon. They came roaring back in the ratings war, they destroyed Ted Turner and the WCW, they won.

And if you ask Vince Russo, why this approach, this new aesthetic was so successful, he says simply, the truth, that was great TV. Plain and simple, the fans just want something true. Just tell the fans what happened. But Peter says it's way more complicated than that. It's not just about the truth. You still have these writers who are scripting the show and wrestlers who are getting that script and following it. So it's not like it's now a true world.

I think it's something more like there are these tiny injections of truth into this world in really unexpected moments. What that does is it puts everyone on high alert all the time for those moments. And when everyone is on high alert for those moments all the time, every moment has the potential to be true, has the potential to have a little bit of that injection into it. And when you are watching for those injections, it completely changes how you are engaging with the art form, with the entertainment. And that creates an entirely new type of fan.

What they call a smart fan, a smart mark, a smart as their own, people who love the wrestling business, but really love the behind the scenes of the business. The what now? What was the smart mark? Smart mark. Here's where you can get a little lingo crazy. The lingo part of wrestling is a huge, huge part of it. And a mark is someone who doesn't know

that wrestling is fake, or using another piece of jargon here, that it is a work. Yes, a work is anything that's not real, as opposed to a shoot, which is something that's real. Like the Montreal screwdriver. Yes. Are shoots by definition something that is not supposed to happen?

In the ring a shoot should never happen, but then there's something called of course a work shoot. And that's something that does happen. Is that where you uh scripted it to seem like it's totally unscripted? And it may even be real life that they're injecting into it, but it was planned. We'll still all discuss that this is what would happen. And so watching wrestling becomes this game of hunting for the truth, according to David Schumacher, and not just any truths, but the authentic truths. The true truths? The true truths. Even if you know that it's fake, there's some point where the guys are really going at it in the ring

that you're just like, wow, maybe it's real, just right there. And that's what makes wrestling so powerful. It's the never-ending search for the reality within the unreal. The fact that we get to blend these things together, I mean, another example that's just fantastic is, in the early 2000s, there was Edge, Matt Hardy,

and a girl named Lita. Lita and Matt Hardy were legitimately in love dating for years. Edge and Matt Hardy were legitimately best friends. And then Edge ended up with Lita, took his best friend's girl. I'm gonna make your life miserable too! Something that unfortunately happens in life sometimes. And the WWE can't kiss more! HASS!

And it was turned into a storyline. Man, I've fought over women since the beginning of time, and we are about to see an epic battle over one right now. I find it incredible that you could go out into the ring and pretend to beat the hell out of someone you want to beat the hell out. To know that you have to go out there work really hard against someone you legitimately hate and also absolutely have to protect? How can we not find that fascinating?

That's awesome. That's incredible. That's like watching Fleetwood Mac go on tour. Exactly. That's what I was gonna say next. That's Andrew Moran's, by the way, from The New Yorker. And play all their songs, because all their songs, they all had these love quadrangles.

They all were married and left each other and wrote songs about, I'm so pissed off at you because you left me for the guy who's standing right there, and then they go out on tour, and Lindsey Buckingham is standing right next to Stephen next playing the song that he wrote about, you betrayed me, I hate you so much.

It's crazy. Right after night. Super fascinating. Yeah, I just think there's a part of the human brain that wants to be confused between those boundaries, that wants to be slipping in between what's real, what's fake to feel that confusion. I feel like that's why Jimmy Fallon

was so successful on Saturday Night Live, not because he was the greatest sketch comedian, but because he broke a lot. And you can't do that in wrestling because those moments are the best. You have to save them. You have to save them. And when people acknowledge a moment

and you can tell they look around at the crowd and they're acknowledging like this is or someone says one line That everyone kind of knows is like whoa that's kind of real those moments are special and you have to save them. Yeah hold on once that guys. Sorry. Hey, what's up? He's on the way. All right. I'll be leaving shortly. Peace. Sorry guys. Usher awaits come on. Okay. I said one real quick question What happened? What happened to Peter Brenthart after this, did he go off to WCW and have a big career? Well, that's sort of the interesting thing is that after the Montreal Screw job, a few weeks later, Brent showed up on WCW Television and it never really worked out for Brett. In 1999, just two years into his contract with WCW, during a match he got kicked in the head and suffered a severe concussion.

And it was the beginning of the end. That same year... Well, ladies and gentlemen, something has gone terribly wrong. Brett's brother Owen Hart, who was wrestling for the WWF during one of his entrances to the match. He was entering from the ceiling and something with the stunt went terribly wrong. And he fell 50 feet into the ring and he died.

This is not a part of the show. This is real life. Owen Hart is being a tend at entity right now by host. I went through a right away. I said I could never. I don't think I can ever go back. Brett Hart spoke with Terry Gross about a year after this incident. You think of all these sort of contrived storylines that they have in wrestling. You know this guy's gonna come in and he's gonna do that and he's gonna he's gonna say this about you. I they're gonna, I just thought, or anything you can possibly imagine is so pathetically meaningless

when you relate to the real life horror of what happened with my brother. He would retire shortly after saying that. ... So thank you to Simon. What did we decide his wrestling name was? Simon the growling gruey heir. Adler. It's because he's from Wisconsin. So you have to be like a fierce cheese.

That's what I'm saying. And thank you also, very special thanks to Fresh Air for letting us air their Bret Hart interview. And thank you also to Paul Jay for allowing us to place some clips from his documentary Wrestling with Shadows. Radio Lab will continue in a moment. Yeah. We're back.

Let's tell us who you are. I am Bruce Burningham. Where do you teach? I teach at Illinois State University. This is Radio Lab. I'm Chad. I'm Robert. So Bruce, he's a a scholar, a language professor, and I called him up because Chad and I were having a little disagreement. Friendly one. Okay, we're having an argument here. I said that when you get the hip-hop and the wrestling and the novels and all that, you're getting a sort of a that when you get the hip hop and the wrestling and the novels and all that, you're getting a sort of a moment, contemporary moment where people are fascinated by authenticity. And then, Chad, my party said, I don't know, maybe people have always been interested in authenticity. And this is just comes with being a human.

It's nothing about now, it's just about us. I mean, that's, it's new in the sense that this generation of which we belong has become very interested in these kind of questions. But Bruce told me this preoccupation, it's not really new. In fact, at least in book form, it goes back way longer than you'd think. 1605. Well, before wrestling and before Fleetwood Mac and before Jimmy Fallon began laughing at his own jokes, there was Miguel Servantes' book, Don Quixote.

Yeah, so the first book really is about authenticity from the get-go. You open this book, Don Quixote, by Miguel Servantes. And right away the narrator says, I'm going to tell you a story which I actually gathered from other authors, from a bunch of different historical documents, so I'm not really the author. He says things like, well, some books say the first adventure was this and some say it was that. So even from the start, you have a very unreliable narrator. Who then proceeds to tell the story of a very unreliable,

if not completely crazy character. Don Quixote, who is dry, withered, capricious, and filled with inconsistent thoughts never imagined by anyone else. So Dan Kioti believes that he has been set on earth to rescue widows, princesses, and be kind to orphan. He's like a delusional totally delusional. Right, he's essentially a guy who's who's read too many zane grain novels and decides he needs to be a cowboy. He thinks herds of sheep are attacking armies. He thinks windmills are giants.

At the same time he has this savvy assistant, Sancho Panzo, who seems to know what's really going on, and they're constantly arguing about what's real and what's not. And then in chapter 8, something really strange happens. One day, Danquio Tei and Sancho Panzo are traveling down the road and they see a carriage with a woman inside. Just an ordinary woman going to the meter husband. Don Quixote, for no reason at all, decides that she is a woman in distress needs to be rescued and he spies this man standing right next to the carriage. He's a bask guy.

He sees this guy and he decides that he's an enemy who needs to be confronted and so they start fighting. Don Quixote was charging the wary bass with his sword on high, determined to cut him in half, and the bass was waiting for him. His sword also raised. And in mid-swing when both swords are in the air, the narrator stops and says, and I don't know where this goes from there. I've run out of material.

And he just sort of stops the air. And this is about 16.0 something? 16.0.5. And the book stops? It's just stop. You mean that's the end of the book? Well, no. So you turned the page and you're in a new chapter,

and now the narrator is just telling you how, as luck would have, he found this manuscript. One day when I was in the Alcaná market in Toledo. Crazily enough, he's at a bizar, I guess guess sort of a, you know, a shopping kind of place. And he sees this pile of old papers and books together in a basket and he's rifling through it. And he sees a picture of Don Quixote de la Mancha. I was astounded and filled with anticipation. There it was.

Apparently I real historical account. In which this tuppendous battle between the gallant bask and the valiant manchigan is concluded the problem was it was in Arabic. And so then he hires a local morisco who was a Christianized Moore to translate it for it. All right, so you now got a guy who's writing a book from historical sources. He's run out of one, he's found another, but now that one has to be translated and on top of that. You frequently insert commentary about the translation and we'll say stuff like well CDMete says this but we all know that Arabs can't be trusted so you know

take that for what that's worth. And as I'm reading it I'm thinking wait a second this was written in 1605 what did people make of a book that didn't seem to have any author had author upon author upon author, like were they horror? I mean the book was a bestseller. It was hugely popular. Apparently people found all these layers and these ambiguities a left riot. Oh yeah, they gobbled up and they left as hard as they could. This is Howard Mancing, a Stravante scholar at Purdue.

And Don Quixote was translated into English in 1612 into French in 1614 into Italian in 1622, everybody read it, including in the new world by the way. Many copies of the first edition of Don Quixote were shipped to the colonies. Wow. So the book is a worldwide bestseller, maybe the first of its kind, and then ten years later, ten years later, Survante's writes a sequel, which kicks up this narrative weirdness to a completely new level. In part two, he introduces a new character named Samson Carrasco.

He actually visits Don Quixote in Sancio to tell them that part one exists. It's a bestseller. And so in the very early chapters of part two, Don Quijote. This would be like walking up to Huckleberry Finn, so by the way, you're living here in Hanibal, Missouri, but you're now a famous boy.

That's exactly what happened. Everybody he meets knows who he is because they've read part one. And now it gets even stranger, because in real life, during that 10 years that it took Servantes to write his second book, a person who goes by the pseudonym of Alonso Fernandez de Ave Yaneita

published his own second part of Don Quixote. Before Srivandhas could get his own second part out. Wait, so this is an unofficial part too? Yeah. Today we'd recognize it as a sort of fan fiction or somebody attempting to steal George Lucas' idea and come up with their own Star Wars installment. So there's this unauthorized part two floating around. Miguel Survanadez is very annoyed by it, I'm assuming.

So in his official sequel to Don Quixote? There is this scene where Don Quixote is at an end, and he overhears a character talking about his relationship with this supposed Don Quixote. Wait, so this guy, this guy... That's Simon Adler, who sat in on the interview with me. This guy existed in the fake keyhote number two. Is it character in that and is now appearing

in the real keyhote number two? Serranti steals him. If you're gonna steal my character, I'll steal yours back, right? So now you've got the real Dunky-O-Tee. He's mumping into a character stolen from a fake book of Dunky-O-Tee. So, so why don't you hote then decides to confront this person? He marches right up to the guy, and he says,

I am don't ke hote of la mancha, the same one who is on the lips of fame, and not that unfortunate man who has wanted to use her, my name, and bring honor to himself with my thoughts. And so it's the climax of that scene which is just wonderful is he forces this other character who he's stolen from the unauthorized sequel whose erotic is stolen to admit that the donkihote he knows from the unauthorized sequel is not the real one and that the one he's currently talking to is the real one. I implore your grace for the sake of what you owe to your being a gentleman, to please make a statement to the magistrate of this village.

And as a matter of fact, he forces him to sign an affidavit to that effect. So he busts him. He busts him, right? In the novel. In the novel. You got a story about a guy that then becomes, in part two story about the story about the guy including false guys inside the story about the Well, there's not the false guys from another book that are right. Right.

It's this. So why even bother trying to figure out what's real? Exactly. Right. Anything like this come before this? No, he's really sort of inventing this whole meta-narrative game that is so popular today. But meta-narrative, what? What if...

Well, up until that point, most stories are simply, they purport to be what they are. I'm telling you a story. But Don Quixote pretends to be something other than what it is. It really is the start of modernity, our modern sense of the world. So you'll get with Chad then. And this is like, this is not waxed and wane, particular year it or because i think well it has wachstyn wane mean the the donkey hote has been read by different generations for different reasons brusse as he thinks the people who were reading the book originally at the time of survathes

they actually reveled in in the the multi levels of fiction they love the metta stuff but during the romantic period and well into the early 20th century, people were less interested in all these narrative layers. And they were more just enthrilled by the romantic Don Quixote or the dreamer Don Quixote. But this generation of which we belong has become very interested in this terrain

that Serrante's charted a long time ago. You see it in the cinema of the late 90s. In movies like The Matrix and then Later Adaptation and then Inception. Exploring the concept of a dream within a dream. See it in Seinfeld. What's going on? We're going to shoot the pilot and then it's going to be on TV the following way. There's this comedian Jerry Seinfeld who's playing a character that happens to be called Jerry Seinfeld Who's making a show within the show about a character who's Jerry Seinfeld? And so you have reality nested three times, but I guess I'm interested in this idea of why is

How is this happening again and why is it happening again? Well my sense of things is That both of these moments are moments of intellectual crisis. Back in Servante's time. Coming out of the Renaissance, you have all of this new scientific knowledge that is calling it to question the foundation that everybody was building their lives on. So suddenly the earth is no longer the center of the universe.

It's now just one planet among several orbiting the sun. So you have people coming to terms with a world view that they can no longer sustain. And as for us now? In the last hundred years, you have Darwinism, you have relativity, you have quantum physics. I mean, cognitive scientists are telling us that we have no free will because they can sort of chart the chemical reaction that happens milliseconds before we think we decide to do something. All of these things tell us that the world that we think we see is not what it is.

And I think that inspires people to then start asking these questions. If what I'm seeing is not real, what is, who am I? And so I think to a great extent, it's a reaction to a moment of intellectual crisis. Wait, but okay, let's say that I like professional wrestling a lot. I don't know anything about any of the research you're telling me about. Why the hell do I like professional wrestling? And why did I like it more when they started blurring these lines? Ooh, hard question.

Well, I would say humans are humans. And one of the things that we do is as opposed to as far as we know, what other animals on this planet do is, we are aware of our own contingency. Meaning we can imagine radically different possibilities. We can imagine worlds where we don't exist, or maybe we only think we exist. I can remember being a child four and five years old, and going to a fabric store with my mother, and there were two mirrors set against opposite walls,

and I was just fascinated at standing in between them and watching the infinite regress go in each direction. You know, and I had not even started kindergarten yet. So I think humans have this fascination with infinite regress and with embeddedness. And with the questions that it forces you to consider, like where does everything begin? And where does it all come from?

I mean, the question at the heart of Don Quixote realizing that he's a character in a novel is, who stands above you? The author stands above you. And so that author has a kind of God-like relationship to you. But that very question starts to make you ask who stands above that author. And if you start asking that question it goes on forever in every direction. The Thank you to Rupert Boyd for coming and playing the Spanish guitar for us on this piece.

On very short notice. And to record books for giving us permission to use George Guidal's wonderful read of the book, Tamquíodí de la Mancha, he's really good. Okay. Well, I guess we should go then, we should say goodbye. Say goodbye. Radio Lab was created by Chad Abumrod and is edited by Sorn Wheeler. Lulumiller and LuttiFossir are our co-hosts. Susie Lechtenberg is our executive producer. Dilling Keif is our director of sound design.

Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Q.Sick, W.A. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz-Kutieris, Sindu Nianna Sam-Bendum, Matt Kielty, Anna McEwen, Alex Nieson, S Kari, Anna Rusk-Witpas, Arian Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. With help from Carolyn McCusker and Sarah Sondbach, our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Adam Shiboh.

Hi, this is Ellie from Cleveland, Ohio. Leadership support for Radio Lab Science Programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, Assignments Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. you