Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) - takeru kobayashi vs. joey chestnut & the art of the narrative

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

Once a year, Joey Chestnut becomes the main character of the internet -- but it wasn't always that way. This week, we're talking about the greatest hot dog rivalry of all time, and the media ringmaster that made it possible. Before Joey's annual stint as a main character, the hot dog eating champion of the world was one Takeru Kobayashi, a Japanese eater who turned a novelty event in the U.S. into a full-blown sensation in the early 2000s. Then, contractual issues and a huge wave of xenophobia pushed Kobi out of the professional scene in America, until Labor Day 2024 when he faced off with Chestnut for the first time in 15 years. A lot has changed since their last meeting... more than anything, the way stories are told using the internet. Jamie speaks with documentarian Nicole Lucas-Haimes, director of the 30 for 30 about the Kobi and Chestnut rivalry: The Good, The Bad, The Hungry. She's also the executive producer of the Netflix rematch, Unfinished Beef. This Thursday, Jamie ventures to Las Vegas to see the Kobi-Chestnut Netflix rematch in person. Watch The Good, The Bad, The Hungry: https://www.netflix.com/title/81752194Watch Unfinished Beef: https://www.netflix.com/title/81743617Buy Raw Dog (now in paperback): https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250847768/rawdogNowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hey, I'm Kurt Brown-Oller. And I am Scotty Landis, and we host Bananas, the podcast where we share the weirdest, funniest, real news stories from all around the world. And sometimes from our guest's personal lives, too. Like when Whitney Cummings recently revealed, her origin story on the show.

There's no way I don't already have rabies. This is probably just why my personality is like this. I've been surviving rabies for the past 20 years. New episodes of bananas drop every Tuesday, in the exactly right now. Listen to bananas on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney,

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I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the powerful stories I'll be mining on our upcoming 12th season of family secrets. We continue to be moved and inspired. by our guests and their courageously told stories. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's Black Business Month,

and Money and Wealth Podcast with John Hope Bryant is tapping in. I'm breaking down how to build wealth, create opportunities, and move from surviving to thriving. It's time to talk about ownership, equity, and everything in between. Black and brown communities

have historically been last in life. Let me just say this. AI is moving faster than civil rights legislation ever did. Listen to money and wealth from the Black Effect Podcast Network on IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm going to tell you about three American ringmasters. The first is the guy you think of when you think of ringmasters. If you think of ringmasters, think of a ringmaster. You're probably thinking.

of P.T. Barnum, or as many people call him, um, who was Hugh Jackman supposed to be in The Greatest Showman? P.T. Barnum, at your service. I'm putting together a show. And I need a star. Every one of us is special. And nobody is like anyone else. Well, he's supposed to be P.T. Barnum.

And sorry, I hadn't seen this movie, but it's so fucking bad. Like, it's worse than my favorite bad biopic, 2014's Jobs, starring Ashton Coochard as one Steve Jobs. Wait, you're gonna, you're gonna fire me? No! I already fired you! A perfect impression. That's Steve, all right.

But P.T. Barnum was, in fact, a famous American promoter and circus men, presented in this 2017 Disney movie as an awesome guy who empowered other people by displaying them in a freak show for personal profit. Truly wild that they tried it. It's a totally dishonest hero narrative, and it made half a billion dollars. And P.T. Barnum would have loved that. He was a fucking liar. So who was the real Barnum?

He was the guy who started his career as a displayer of, quote-unquote, human curiosities by purchasing and displaying a disabled enslaved woman named Joyce Heath, who he lied to indicate was the 161-year-old nurse of the long-dead George Washington. slavery wasn't even legal in New York at this time. Barnum had to find a loophole in order to exploit Heath's labor, and when she passed away, he charged civilians 50 cents to watch a live autopsy of her corpse. This was a guy who targeted vulnerable families

with quote-unquote unusual children, like Charles Stratton, a child with dwarfism, and Annie Jones, the baby who would become the bearded lady. And they're shown in The Greatest Showman, as consenting adult parties, when in reality, they were displayed as freaks starting when they were under five years old. Same goes for the underlying racism and xenophobia

of displaying children from El Salvador as mysticized Aztec twins. The list goes on. Barnum's act was so ablest, racist, and xenophobic that people in the 1800s knew it was that. But Barnum himself was a character within the world of this circus. He was always at the center of it,

and with the character of Barnum came a necessity to control the narrative of that character. Ringmaster 2. Probably the most successful of the last century. This ringmaster did not just become a multimillionaire off a tremendously successful, deeply exploited a franchise, but managed to make himself a character within that world more successfully than Barnum ever did.

I'm Vince McMahon, damn it. Let's hear it. Somebody call my mama. I am the boss. Vincent J. McMahon. Like Barnum before him, McMahon wrote himself a character in his own circus, only to be publicly disgraced in the last few years. He is, of course, the extremely successful owner of the WWE, who turned his father's wrestling franchise into an empire that wasn't strictly focused on athletics, but just as much on the personas of the race. wrestlers themselves. Professional wrestling is soap operas that straight men are allowed to cry at, right? And the characters that McMahon built reflect a lot of the same prejudices that we were seeing

in Barnum's act 100 years earlier. It's a short road to finding racism, sexism, and xenophobia in the way these characters are presented. Here is Vince McMahon in character talking to a character named Sibu. Well, I'll be down. I thought I was in Texas. Hell, I'm not in Texas. I'm in Afghanistan. Hey, boys, check it out.

There's a member of the Taliban. Oh, wait a minute. I know you. You're that guy Sibu. This is just a random example, but you name a racial or ethnic group, and the W.W.E has created a character to offend them, either to appeal to American jingoism or to make people hate the character, Mr. McMahon,

who is supposed to be evil. This is a constant distinction made by Vince McMahon, the actual McMahon. It's the character who's evil. The man himself is a tough but fair businessman who could be brutal but ultimately is a hardworking American success story. McMahon takes advantage of, this narrative loophole all the time. It makes it easier to distance himself from actual allegations

of abuse behind the scenes. And because McMahon had more of a chokehold on the wrestling industry as the years went on, there's this feeling of Stockholm syndrome that haunts his legacy talent. Like, well, he had no choice but to be evil. This is from the recent Netflix docu-series, Mr. McMahon. To who? He's a broker. He's a number two guy here. office. To who is? You know nothing about the rest of it, Benita. And the timing of this docu-series is pretty interesting on Netflix's part, because they have an upcoming partnership with the WWE, with plans to broadcast their weekly raw events starting next January. So there's this both-sidesness to the Netflix strategy. The feeling of, let's call out and dismantle the ringmaster

for decades of unsavory behavior before beginning to broadcast his product. It's a pattern I've been noticing on that platform a lot recently. Another example is that Netflix recently broadcast a pretty broadly inaccurate Ryan Murphy miniseries about the Menendez brothers that drew a lot of criticism only to broadcast a new documentary from the perspective of the Menendez brothers

in real life just a month later. So there's no consistent ally ship on a streamer. It's just asking the question, what will people watch? Okay, we'll broadcast it. But let's return to Vince for now. But McMahon's defense against any of this, against a full-blown sex trafficking scandal, against rape, against racism,

against protecting and shielding abusers on his staff, is that people are only willing to believe these allegations because he plays a bad guy on TV. A lot of people have confused through the years, you know, who my character was on television and who I am. Used to bug the hell out of me. I'm not that guy. And I realized it doesn't matter what you want, Vince. It doesn't matter how you want to be perceived.

It's the way you are being perceived. Your perception is reality. And this worked for nearly half a century. But in a social media-driven world where conversations around abuse and discrimination have now become more normalized, McMahon is a great example of how the ringmaster doesn't quite play in today's culture. And knowing the allegations against him and how he talks about it in this docu-series... What's you're accused of rape? You're a rapist. But it was consensual and actually had it been a rape,

um, these statute of limitations had run out. Fucking good. Ringmaster 3 George Shea wasn't planning on getting into PR. He wanted to be a writer, but being a writer is not particularly profitable. And George Shea wanted money. And when you want to write and make money, the lessons of Barnum and McMahon would come in handy. Just start a big show that crosses reality with real life and don't really worry about the collateral damage.

That's the ringmaster way. And Shea was mentored by one of the best. a guy named Morty Matt's, the now 100-year-old PR mogul who is a massive New York advertising pioneer, including, ah, the point is emerging, the Nathan's famous hot dog eating contest. Yes, it's a hot dog episode. And it's George Shea, who is the indisputable ringmaster of the professional hot dog eating world, at least at the time of this recording, because Morty Mattes came up, with the Nathan's famous hot dog eating contest in the early 1970s,

coming in hot with the lie that this contest had been going on on the 4th of July every year since the 1910s, which is not true. The Nathan's contest was then what it is now, an advertisement for Nathan's famous hot dogs. And while the hot dog eating contest was a fun thing known locally in the 70s into the late 80s, it wasn't anywhere near the phenomenon it is now. In the early 1990s, Matt's offloads the contest onto George Shea entirely,

and Shea takes it extremely seriously. And what I think the contest does most successfully in these early years is further cement the iconography of the hot dog, the phallic tube meat, with American patriotism. And that becomes very important here, because once he's brought into the fold in the 1990s, George Shea casts himself as the MC in his, in his ringmaster character at every event.

In 1997, George and his brother Richard Shea founded Major League Eating, a professional organization that formalized eating as an American sport, and because they controlled the Nathan's contest, essentially gave the brothers a media monopoly for pro-eaters in the U.S. And the contest grows in popularity in jingoism as the years go on. Shea finds a character for himself that's somewhere between Barnet, and McMahon, not afraid to antagonize on-stage competitors or encourage rivalries, but also being overtly worshipful of his champions in a way that McMahon would never dream of.

And while George has distanced himself from the pro wrestling comparisons, he has overt connections to the WWE. His wife worked there, as well as for some American soap operas. And so while it sounds unhinged that this would be how we're introducing hot dog eaters, I need you to listen to how George Shea brings out his champions. Here's how he brought out Joey Chestnut in 2014, and you've got to hand it to him. Only moments from her womb. And before she even placed him to her breast, his mother held him close and whispered in his ear.

She said, you are of my flesh, but you are not mine own. Fate is your father, and you belong to the people. Of now, and of always, of the 4th, of July, of the nation, of the free undergone. The seven-time Nathan's famous champion of the world. Ladies and gentlemen, let me hear it for Joey Chester. Out here in the fields. Like it or not, it's effective. And I like it.

It makes sense in context once you understand a little bit more about the showmanship that comes with professional wrestling. And it's very entertaining. And after George takes over, Americans generally win the Nathan's contest through the early to mid-90s with what are now considered to be amateur hot dog numbers. 19, 21, pathetic. But starting in 1997, something interesting happens. Japanese competitor Hirofumi Nakajima wins, a 22-year-old 135-pound competitor who stood in stark contrast to the huskier American competitors. And it's here when an international element is introduced in what's been marketed as the ultimate American contest, where the George Shea character really finds his voice.

See, a lot of what I say is not literally true in terms of words. but it's emotionally true. His ankle, like McMahon and Barnum, a lot of xenophobia. And this only escalates as Japanese competitors continue to flock to the Nathan's contest into the new millennium. In Japan, televised professional eating was already very much a thing. And Shea, by his own account, both encouraged Japanese competitors to come to the U.S. to compete and was xenophobic in the promotions leading up to it to stoke more American audience. reaction. This is from Nicole Lucas Hames' 2019, 30 for 30, called The Good, the Bad, the Hungry.

Everything was a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we said, you know, there was a championship belt that was lost in Japan. There was, right? If we said that we had a rivalry with the Japanese, we did. If we said there was a circuit of events, there was, right? And everything sort of just came true. But there was no Japanese competitor. No competitor. globally that made a bigger first impression on the Nathan's contest than Takero Kobayashi in 2001. He was completely unknown to American audiences, but he was already a hugely successful eater and personality in Japan. And when he came to the Nathan's contest, Kobe quite literally doubled the hot dog eating record of 2000 contest winner Kazutoyo Ari. He ate 50 hot dogs in 12

minutes. It had never been done before. And while George Shea had been able to poke at his xenophobia angle while Americans were nipping at Japanese competitors' heels, Kobe changed the game entirely, and he won the Nathan's contest back to back for six years. And so, Ringmaster Shea spots an opportunity, one that feeds into the nationalism the contest is marketed on. And he sets out to find an American competitor to pit against Kobayashi. but none materialized right away. And in the meantime, Kobe became popular on American TV for his braggadocious persona and technique,

really legitimizing eating as a strategic sport and not, as She had positioned it in the past, as a sinful American gorgeing session. To which I say, why not both, right? Anyways, here's Kobayashi competing against a bear on Spike TV in the mid-2000s. And now introducing to my right, his opponent, the beast. He descends from Codiak Island, Alaska.

Fully erect, this beast stands over eight feet tall and weighs in tonight at 1,089 pounds. There we go. He's down to last one. He must know. That's it. And that is it. We have a winner. It's fair.

The beast has won. When I tell you he was popular. I mean, Spike TV, what a moment in time. And keep in mind, Kobe is becoming famous alongside a huge reality television boom in the U.S., one that Major League eating was eager to ride the wave of. ESPN began broadcasting the contest in 2004, at the same time that major reality franchises like Survivor, American Idol, the Apprentice, the biggest loser, the amazing race, and on and on and on,

were doing blockbuster runs and averaging millions upon millions of viewers. Throughout the 2000s, the Shays tried to ingratiate the MLE and, by extension, the success of Kobayashi, into this reality TV environment, producing specials like the St. Patrick's Day Chowdown and the Turkey Bowl. This Kobe versus Bear moment was a part of a Fox reality show called Man versus Beast in 2003. And by the way, legend has it that Kobe won during the dress rehearsal. There's no doubt that MLE breaking into the mainstream was very well-timed, because there was this huge interest in reality TV in the 2000s that only increased with events like the 2007 Writers' Strike

hitting the scripted space with setbacks. And who happened to be watching Kobe v. Bear, but the American competitor that George Jay had been waiting for. One, Joseph Chestnut. Also, his middle name is Christian, which makes me laugh. Joseph Christian Chestnut. Here he is in the 30 for 30. It was so much easier for me to motivate myself

when I thought Kobayashi was purely the enemy. My nemesis. The ringmaster had found the rivalry that matched his vision. And now, it was possible to position Kobayashi as the outsider and Joey as the scrappy American champion. And it's Shea who oversaw and actively fostered a hot dog feud that lives rent-free in my mind until this day. The great feud of Kobayashi v. Chestnut, a narrative engineered by a character right on stage with them, a true American ringmaster. The grand narrative of Kobayashi versus Chestnut, your 16th minute, starts now.

When you turn up the lights, but I can be perfect all in a time So make me a start Let's take it too far And give me one moment Let's see 16 minutes of pain

60 minute of fame 16 minute of fame 16 minute of pay One more minute of pay Welcome, welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all.

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It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good. from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change.

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the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our IHeart Radio Music Festival, presented by Capital One, is coming back to Las Vegas. Vegas. September 19th,

On your feet. Streaming live only on Hulu. Ladies and gentlemen. Brian Adams. Ed Sheeran. Fade. Glorilla. Jelly Roll.

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Tim McRaw. Tickets are on sale now at AXS.com. Get your tickets today. AXS.com. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without. a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness, the way it has echoed and reverberated throughout your life, impacting your very legacy. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few

of the profound and powerful stories I'll be mining on our 12th season of Family Secrets. With over 37 million downloads, we continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories. I can't wait to share 10 powerful new episodes with you, stories of tangled up identities, concealed truths, and the way in which family secrets almost always need to be told. I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests for this new season of family secrets. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes it's hard to remember, but going through something like that is traumatic experience, but it's also not the end of their life.

That was my dad, reminding me and so many others who need to hear it, that our trauma is not our shame to carry, and that we have big, bold, and beautiful lives to live after what happened to us. I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Leitra Tate. On my new podcast, The Unwanted Sorority, we weighed through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually looks like, and sounds like, in real time. each week I sit down with people who live through harm, carried silence, and are now reshaping the systems that failed us. We're going to talk about the adultification of black girls,

mothering as resistance, and the tools we use for healing. The unwanted sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space. So let's lock in. We're moving towards liberation together. Listen to the unwanted sorority, new episodes every Thursday on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to 16th Minute, the podcast where we take a look at the Internet's characters of the day and see how their moment affected them and what that says about the Internet and us. And this week, we are talking about my fucking wheelhouse. Competitive hot dog eating.

Yes, this is the second episode of 16th Minute about hot dog. I don't know what to tell you. This is my life, this is my passion, and they're not going to let me write a second book about it, no matter how many times I ask. And in case you're new here, I did actually write the first book about it. It's called Raw Dog, The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs,

and you can buy it wherever books are sold. But today, we're going to be going over the famed rivalry of two men who tend to become the main character on the 4th of July every calendar year, current hot dog eating champion of the world, Joey Chestnut, and former hot dog eating champion of the world, Takaro Kobayashi. But unlike other episodes of this show, I'm not looking to talk to them, but the people who have shaped their story.

If you're a fan of the contest even casually, you know about this feud. It's been going on for nearly 20 years. And Kobayashi's professional eating career in both Japan and the States goes back even longer. But even if you're not a hot dog fan, you might have heard recently that these rivals went head-to-head live on Netflix this past Labor Day on September 2nd, 2024 in Las Vegas. And it was a big deal, not only because it had been nearly 15 years since the two had competed and Kobayashi had all but left the sport in the U.S., but because for a long time, they would have been contractually barred from doing a rematch. This is because of how the contracts for Major League eating were run. Joey was largely barred from participating in eating events that had not been approved by the organization in advance. And as Kobayashi was no longer a member of Major League eating, more on that in a bit,

this meant a rematch wouldn't be possible. But this past summer, Joey's contract with the MLE was discontinued. We'll get into why, but essentially because he wanted to pursue business opportunities that conflicted with Major League eatings. Joey took a contract with Impossible Foods, a vegan brand and competitor of Nathan's famous, meaning that unless he dropped the deal, MLE would drop him. Joey chose Impossible, and all of a sudden, the MLE was out of the picture and left a clean path for the two rivals to finally rematch. And yes, of course I was there.

We're going to release a minisode about what the Internet's reaction and interaction with it was like this Thursday. But today, we're going to look at how this story evolved over 20 years, both online and in media, to yield a sports rivalry that McMahon or Barnum themselves would kill for. This is something I've been thinking about a lot recently, which you can probably tell from my bizarre over-preparation to try to better understand P.T. Barnum and Vince McMahon before getting to George Shea. And before anyone sues me, they're all litigious. I'm not saying they are all the same guy,

but they're cut from the same cloth, right? They're businessmen, they're hyper-visible, and they're crafters of narrative that the general public can engage with as if it's true or engage with as if it's fiction and still enjoy the product. But the product is other people. And as I thought about this,

I felt like this same explanation could apply to a lot of contemporary social media culture. While there's plenty of discourses and harassment campaigns led by modern ringmasters, your Ben Shapiro's, your peers Morgan's, all the way down to the drama YouTubers who pay their bills speculating about other niche celebrities without really talking to anyone except Google AI. These days, the ringmaster is, you guessed it, baby. The Algorithm. Internet algorithms, as we've discussed many, many times on this show,

have become increasingly forceful drivers of who becomes a character of the day in the last 10 to 15 years, not just on our social media platforms, but on streaming platforms like Netflix, which broadcasted this rematch between Joey and Kobe. So, yes, the rematch, titled Unfinished Beef, pretty good, did allow for both Kobayashi and Chestnut more ostensible narrative control, than the way that they were presented by George Shea back in the day. But I don't think that there is a lack of a ringmaster here.

At the Vegas event in September, while the thrill of the competition was the same, the vibe was different. The space that George Shea's voice would usually fill was replaced with corporate synergy. So what does that difference look like? Well, to understand, we'll have to return to what the rivalry looked like under the steady control of a ringmaster to say for sure.

So come with me, if you will, to the 4th of July 2001. And just to reiterate, the majority of interview clips with Kobayashi, Chestnut, and Shea are coming from today's guest, Nicole Lucas Hames' 2019 documentary, The Good, the Bad, the Hungry. As we discussed, Kobe came to the states to compete in the Nathan's contest in 2001. less than three months after the release of Shrek, somebody, and two months before 9-11. A fragile time. And while Kobe was not the first Japanese champion to take the contest by storm,

he was, in fact, the third in a short amount of time, he was by far the best competitor they'd ever seen. For context, the person who won the 2000 contest was victorious by three and an eighth hot dog, and Kobe won in 2001 by 19 hot dogs. He could not be denied, and he was initially celebrated by the crowd. A little kid is incredible. A total beating of the Americans. He was like a conveyor belt.

He was just putting him in two at a time. But this wouldn't last. While xenophobic and often just boldly racist, it's not super surprising that a hyper-American broadcast would be eager to turn on a Japanese competitor. You don't need me to tell you that relations between the U.S. and Japan in the last hundred years have not been great, if that's how we want to briefly summarize Americans dropping two atomic bombs onto Japanese cities in 1945 and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in the U.S. back in 1941.

How is Pearl Harbor coming up in my hot dog episode? It's far too complicated a dynamic to recap in detail here, but suffice it to say. American media was no stranger to irrationally villainizing Japanese people, and doing so appealed to some inherent and lasting prejudice within a lot of Americans. And Kobe wasn't the only Asian competitor to be taking the eating seed by storm. Longtime women's champion Sonia Thomas is a South Korean-born American eater, who was a longtime head-to-head competitor with Chestnut and Kobayashi, only to be sidelined in 2011 when George Shea decided.

to separate the contest by binary gender, announcing at the time, I don't know that the thinking was parochial. It was more embracive. You can read my book, Broad Dog, for more on that. Gender discrimination and professional eating is a whole other story. I have to stop myself. In The Good, the Bad, the Hungry, filmmaker Nicole Lucas Hames does a terrific job of illustrating the cultural differences between Joey and Kobe, mainly by interviewing their families. Joey was raised in a Southern California middle-class household with the American notion that food was comfort and commune,

and Kobe was raised in Japan by a father who didn't approve of consuming food to excess. As Kobe's father tells it, he really only grew to fully understand and support his son's career when he saw the level of care and passion that Kobe had for it. There's also an inherent difference in Joey and Kobe's approach to competition as a concept. Kobe mentions towards the end of the documentary that he was raised with the notion

that a competitor is to be respected and honored, while Joey's American mentality was more like this. He can't just be that much better. There's a lot of nights where I can't quite get to sleep because I'm thinking about, why can that Japanese man eat so much more than everybody else? Add this to the frequent language barrier dissonance, and you get a narrative that's very malleable for George Shea,

something that he certainly made hay of at the peak of the rivalry. Joey and Kobe both admit that having such an intense competitor was deeply motivating. And Kobe's margin of victory grew slimmer not just in hot dog victories, but across MLE events throughout the mid-2000s. Joey finished third behind Sonia Thomas in 2005, 19 hot dogs behind Kobe, only to surge ahead to lose. by barely two hot dogs just the next year. He was nipping at Kobe's heels,

and George Shea was not afraid to point it out. Although at this time, to his credit, Shea does continue to give Kobe the worshipful intros that he's known for. Here's one of them. The rules of the universe do not apply in the 144 pounds that comprise to Kiro Kobayashi. He is an alchemist who has transformed athletics into America. mathematics, mathematics into poetry, and poetry into history. I mean, it's just really good.

But by 2007, as Joey continued to nip at his heels, Kobe hit an emotional wall after losing his mother to cancer. He originally stated that he would not be competing in the Nathan's contest that year, but later reversed this decision, only to be beset by a jaw injury that George Shea referred to as jaw thritis. And while Kobe says to this day that this injury was genuinely sustained while training, and yeah, that makes total sense when your job is shoveling food into your mouth, the attitude of Joey and George at the time was, yeah, you're bullshitting, man, you're just

afraid that Joey's going to beat you, which by the time the documentary came out read as pretty insensitive. But in 2007, Joey Chess Noddy's not. did beat Kobayashi, taking him down by three hot dogs, 66 to 63. Kobe made headlines that year for eating his own vomit in the final seconds of the contest, which is, don't look that clip up. And while the racial and xenophobic invocations toward Kobe certainly existed before 2007, there is a clear shift that takes place once he loses to an American. This is moments after Joey Chestnut's first win.

We have our confidence back. The dark days of the last six years are behind us. And of course, Kobayashi notices this shift too and is deeply freaked out and hurt by it. He says in the documentary, I could feel the crowd becoming aggressive toward me. I started to feel threatened that they might do something to me when I got off the scene.

I didn't understand American culture, so it scared me. And to be clear, Joey certainly is not innocent in all of this. Once he wins, he gets cocky and antagonistic towards Kobe. But based on the footage that is included in Hames's 30 for 30, it's clear that George Shea is coaching both competitors to give answers to camera that will create the best promos, closer to professional wrestlers than typical athletes. And in a clip that makes my blood boil, we hear George Shea play the character of George Shea

describing the moment Kobe lost, then breaking character when the take is finished to reveal how he actually feels about it. After that event, I went back to my room and I wept. I silently wept because something was lost. I wept. And I really don't mean this with too much disrespect, because it's fine for some events to be fucking goofy, right? The problem was that the poking fun from the Shea's side often seemed to be at their own champion's expense. Because I can attest, and the 2024 Netflix broadcast reflects that both Kobe and Joey take eating very, very seriously.

It is in no way a joke to them, just in case there was any doubt. Once he begins losing, things get complicated in the negotiation of Kobe's contract within the MLE. Kobe wants to be able to compete in his home country and not require approval from the Shea brothers to do anything, but the MLE says no. And if Kobe didn't agree to the terms of his restrictive contract, he wouldn't be welcome back on the Nathan stage to try and reclaim his title from Joey. So by the late 2000s, Kobe has put between Iraq and a hard place. Either he leaves opportunities and money that he'd worked for for years on the table, or he plays ball and continues to compete in the hot dock contest. And for the next few years, Kobe tries to make this work,

as the chestnut rivalry seems to calcify into actual intense animosity between the two men. After Kobe lost for a second time in an improvised overtime segment following a tie in 2008, By 2009, you see Joey and Kobe sitting beside each other with their arms folded, refusing to speak. And keep in mind, this is as social media is just starting to take shape, and internet culture is taking off. So there's not yet a platform where you can properly live tweet or start a full-blown vendetta against a hot dog rival. It would have even been hard to watch the contest at the time. ESPN didn't start broadcasting the event until 2004. and that change had a lot to do with the hype around Kobayashi.

And anecdotally, based on people in the competitive eating environment I've talked with, they genuinely fucking hated each other. And while they didn't know it in 2009, this would be the last time that the two appeared on the Nathan's stage together. And Joey wins again, beating Kobe by a four hot dog margin. And as the years go on and Joey wins more and more, Hobie is no longer being cheered by American audiences like he was at the beginning of the decade. He's being booed.

In a way that I can't help feel echoes the way xenophobic WWE villains were brought on, then and now. The way you hear the Iron Sheik was summoned to the ring at the peak of his healdom. Thank you very much, Gene Mean intelligent American, intelligent Miami City, all American resting city, people like you always tell them. Welcome to the Miami. The difference is, Kobayashi is not playing a character in the way that WWE performers are. He's not playing an exaggerated cultural stereotype in a soap opera for boys.

He's just trying to be himself and compete. In the documentary, Joey recalls this feeling of extreme jingoism as well. America on the 4th of July. I think when Major Leading made the headline in the contest of America v. Japan, it hurt Kobayashi. It made him an enemy. It might not surprise you to hear that George Shea does not like the way that he comes off in this 30 for 30. Nicole and I talk about it in our interview, but that makes sense because he can't stop saying things like this.

I have always used pro-American rhetoric and the belt is a national prize from the day the belt was made. You think I want Kobayashi to win six years in a row necessarily? Like if he wins, he wins, but that's not grateful. the narrative. The issue is, as someone who's competing this from an international basis, you have to understand that there's an American hero, and you can be a hero in the same exact way. But you can't be an American hero, because you weren't American. So presenting this ringmaster mentality as a funny and cool thing, while clearly not considering the pain that uplifting Joey was causing Kobayashi, who, and I'm not entertaining other opinions on

this, did make the Nathan's contest popular on a national scale single-handedly. Without Kobe, there is no Joey Chestnut, period. And to not just feel discarded, but actively hated in the U.S. after losing, really affected Kobe. He says in the 30 for 30. I was walking on the streets in New York. A passer by yelled. USA to me.

I was hurtful. I felt un-welcome. I was shocked. They used to cheer for me. And I started to feel I wasn't welcome in America anymore. 2010 is the last straw, now deeply disillusioned with the MLE, and to some extent, America and general, contract negotiations with Kobayashi fall apart for the final time,

and he's barred from competing in the contest for good. But Kobe is a showman himself and always has been, and in protest shows up to the 2010 contest in an iconic black t-shirt with green text reading Free Kobe. And while accounts differ here as to why this happened, Kobe hopped on stage during the contest to continue this protest. And here, it's the final turn of the screw. Instead of engaging with the one-time hot dog hero,

the MLEs sent security to arrest Kobe. And there's a physical struggle to get him off the stage. I still can't kind of believe this happened. It's very cruel and uncomfortable to watch. Six-time winner, Tekaru tsunami Kobayashi, was detained by police after storming the stage at the annual contest following a contractual dispute with organizers. And while Jaws relished his win, Kobayashi was charged with trespassing and resisting arrest.

And, of course, the contest goes on and Joey wins again. And while there's plenty of fascinating hot dog drama, you can read a certain someone's book to learn more about, the rivalry between Joey and Kobe falls off here for nearly 15 years. Chestnut loses once to Matt Stoney in 2015, but outside of that has now won the contest 16 times. And by the time I saw him compete on the Nathan stage in 2023, because yes, I go every year and I refuse to be embarrassed by it,

Joey's only competitor is Joey. To his credit, in the last five years, Joey has appeared to reflect on this time and this rivalry a bit and has expressed regret at engaging with this xenophobic narrative as thoroughly as he did. But for Kobe, this was too little too late. The Shea brothers invited him back, but Kobe never accepted an invitation from the MLE again. In the meantime, Kobe and his manager slash wife Maggie James live between Japan and the U.S. And Kobe did continue to eat and compete professionally, just not in the MLE, which still held a

stranglehold on competition in the U.S. By the time Hames' 30 for 30 came out, the two hadn't competed against each other in nearly a decade and said they wanted to record their segments separately so they wouldn't have to spend time together. And it's here that George Shea's narrative power over Takiro Kobayashi in particular comes to an end. I think this moment from Kobe and the dock

explains this most succinctly. As a Japanese, I wondered why Americans could not express themselves more constructively. In Japanese culture, we don't boo competitors. It is not necessary to boo an opponent. But now I understand. But now I understand. I see negative campaigns happening in American politics. That's the American way.

I now know that's a part of the country. I know that's a part of the country. That's a part of the culture. And even though it seemed unlikely to happen in 2019, it stayed Nicole Lucas Hames' dream, and if rumors are to be believed, Joey's dream, to one day hold a rematch between the two. But as long as Joey was with the MLE,

that was never going to happen. Until summer 2024, when Joey was released from his MLE contract and barred from the Nathan's contest in a way that, was stunningly similar to how Kobayashi was back in the day. He wanted to pursue more lucrative opportunities. And honestly, as I'm sure Joey knows,

Joey was a bigger draw than the Nathan's contest itself at that point. And so, a decade and a half later, Joey and Kobe got to introduce themselves on the Netflix broadcast, tweak the rules of the contest to a place that was mutually agreeable, and have a final fight to the finish. But are they really in control of their own narratives now, or are we creating this new, more opaque ringmaster? When we come back, I talk with the director of the good, the bad, the hungry, and the executive producer of Unfinished Beef on Netflix, Nicole Lucas Hames. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney.

the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all, childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles, and more and found the shrimp to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer.

Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on a street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network.

tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. My name is Ed. Everyone say, hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer, and my mom is a cousin. So, like, it's not like... What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club?

I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. Well, 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage.

now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camp. are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs.

Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was so overwhelming, and you don't know who's next to you. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness, the way it has echoed and reverberated throughout your life, impacting your very legacy.

Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the profound and powerful stories. I'll be mining on our 12th season of Family Secrets. With over 37 million downloads, we continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories. I can't wait to share 10 powerful new episodes with you, stories of tangled up identities, concealed truths,

and the way in which family secrets almost always need to be told. I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests for this new season of Family Secrets. Family Secrets. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in the backlog will be identified.

a small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny, you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught, and I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors, and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum,

the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolvable. solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to 16th Minute. And of course I took all the notes for the episode you're listening to in a fuzzy pink notebook that says welcome to fabulous Las Vegas.

What do you take me for? And this week, we're revisiting the narrative saga that surrounded Takero Kobayashi and Joey Chestnut's very recently concluded rivalry. And there's no one I'd rather speak to about this than Nicole Lucas Hames, director of the now very cited, 20-for-30 documentary, The Good, the Bad, the Hungry. It's a piece that was really influential on me while I was working on Raw Dog, and clearly on the MLE and professional hot dog eating itself. As we discussed in our interview,

George Shea was said to be unhappy with his portrayal in the documentary, and after it's released, you can see a clear pullback from the broad nationalist narratives that used to define the contest. In the 2020s, Shea has absolutely changed tack a little bit. And for the record, I did reach out to George Shea to do a little bit. an interview for this episode, and I didn't hear back, which honestly does not surprise me. If you've read my book, I'm very critical of him. And I probably wouldn't have answered my email either. So without further ado, here is my interview with the lovely Nicole Lucas Hames.

My name is Nicole Lucas Hames, and I am a documentary filmmaker. This is like a dream interview. Now over the course of half a decade, Ben telling stories about professional eaters. And specifically, professional eaters. What was it like returning to this rivalry years later? So it's rare that has a long-form journalist, one has a chance to return to a story so many years later. It was very interesting to me personally to see the changes that had happened in the ensuing years, there are personal changes between Joey and Kobe. Joey really wanted to be the champion and worked very, very hard for it. So when we filmed, which was 2018, it was relatively newer for him. So his legacy wasn't as cemented as it was in 2024. And then changed during the

course of our production, when Joey then, oh, and by the way, do you still have a crush on him? I have since met him, and he was aware of it, it turns out. But yeah, yeah. So Joey was more of a hothead, and I think he would agree to that and made some intemperate remarks about Kobayashi. And I've really found a much more mature individual six years, later that in a short period of time, he grew quite a bit, I think is striving to take a more elder statesman role. In addition to, of course, wanting to beat the pants out of Kobe and prove that he's the goat, Kobayashi went through a really interesting change that I wasn't really aware of because Kobe doesn't speak English very well. And so when we were talking long

distance planning what became unfinished beef. This wasn't communicated to me until I really went to interview him, which was my second trip to Japan on this matter. And what I learned was that he had been very depressed. He had not competed during the pandemic. So he had been to see his monk who he solicited help from who we met. I love this guy. That material ended up not making it into the broadcast sadly. And bit by bit worked very hard to get over his depression because he was a competitor who wasn't competing. He needed it to have his life make sense. Joey had made some comment in the press about wanting to take on Kobe. And I had a bit of an aha moment going, well, there's probably no one in the world.

who could do this except maybe me and maybe one or two other people, but yeah, mostly probably me. So I reached out to Kobe via Maggie and asked if they were interested and Kobe said, yes, as long as they could compete by rules that Kobe felt were fair. So when Kobe knew that this contest was afoot and it was potentially possible, I think it helped them bit by bit, out of the depression. He was way more, I think, tender back in 2018 when we were making the movie because I don't think he had ever had an opportunity to fully tell his story. Right. There was a lot of pain underneath it. This time, while we were interviewing him, he had a bit

of an aha moment and said, I'm not crying. And all of this, this is in Joey's head. So it was really kind of great to see that he had recovered from a dark night of the soul and did so successfully, I think, to show up for this battle was fantastic. It felt as if Joey and Kobe were more able to curate how they presented themselves versus in the Nathan's contest where it's more common for someone to be presented to you. I think that's true. while I was the driving force, other people were hired to really execute the vision of the show. So the production company was Den of Thieves, and I would say it was fascinating to me to watch the care that they exhibited in helping Kobe and Joey have this be their event too. And of course, I was part of it, but I'm a voice, but I'm not the driving force in making that

broadcast, a passing of the baton. There was a lot of discussion from each of their respective camps. We made the 30 for 30. We tried to get them together for a rematch with ESPN and they would have nothing to do with it. Jenna Anthony commissioned the good, the bad, the hungry, at 30 for 30. And she moved over to Netflix. And so I knew that Jenna would be interested, really quite an instrumental role in both of these hot dog stories. They grew and changed as people. How did their attitude towards one another change? Kobe's so careful about culturally.

In Japan, it seemed to me, from what I can understand, really as an outsider, that there's a culture of honoring one's opponent. So it's very rare when anyone would publicly badmouth an opponent, though I understand that true hard feelings from Kobe's point of view to Joey. And in turn, Joey to Kobe, I think Joey would love nothing more than to continue to compete against Kobayashi. And I really do believe that he is sincere and that that is his competitor of his lifetime. So I think some of his attempts to be nice are motivated with the possibility of a future relationship. That's my opinion. Joey hasn't really said that. That was my personal takeaway. But I don't really think Kobe wants to do this anymore. He's going to retire. I mean, look, never say never. But I think

he's pretty clear that this was it. Why was this the narrative that was so effective in the first place? When you were approaching that and getting to know the competitors better, what was sticking out to you about what was appearing again and again in these hot dog hero narratives? I just recently said this to Jodie Walker and her piece, but I truly mean this. I think George is a genius. He knows how to juxtapose the high and the low. to make good fun. And he gets tone. And tone is a really hard thing to get right.

I mean, when people create art, it's, and there's participants in the movies, it's holding a mirror. And I think George saw himself, my guess would be, by seeing how it changed after the film, I think he recognized, and maybe he had,

had been unaware of what he really had been doing. Like, I mean, we end up sometimes making mistakes in our, in our own bubbles and not even realizing. And so I noticed, too, that the nationalism was scaled back, that this was not any longer about sort of an American hero, but there is still a lot of American trappings. I mean, it's July 4th. Right. He has pulled off this extraordinary coup.

of equating hot dog eating with patriotism on July 4th. Yeah. In everyone's mind in the country, it's challenging to dial back nationalism on July 4th. Kobayashi is also extremely charismatic as in George. So Kobe had and has great personal style, loved what he did. The world was his oyster. he captured the American imagination in an extraordinary way, and he broke through the culture in the early arts.

That was phenomenal, and there was no other character who was doing it. I agree with you that without Kobe, there would not have been a compelling main character. I understood that I wanted to explore satiety, but I didn't know at the beginning that it would be, become a reflection about America. And that was something that we really discovered along the way and really kind of deep into editing. And were Joey and Kobe happy with the way their stories were presented? I felt like you're very empathetic and respectful towards both contestants. I think they felt that. I think that they each had their gripes, which probably let me know that I was doing okay. Kobe wanted more granular information about why he was

mad at George. I think Joey felt a little that the film was more about Kobe than him. Besides these complaints, I think in general, they felt that they were happy with it, that they were captured. I heard that George Shea wasn't thrilled about his portrayal in the 30 for 30 and looking at other people of George Shea's ilk who are narrative creators. And, you know, seeing the camera turned towards them, I feel like almost always creates this tension because all of a sudden, this narrative that you have had deeply within your control for however many decades is being challenged in a way that wouldn't have previously been impossible. That's interesting. You know, when we started the film, George began doing sort of

what he did in, you know, spinning and was presenting himself as an entertaining character with sort of the tropes that have been in the press before. And I, and we had to stop. And I said, George, for us to make this film, if we're going to make it. I need you to be you. We need the real story. And he agreed. You're right. He was not happy with his portrayal.

And I also didn't know where it would lead when we began. We went through, I don't know, thousands of hours of footage and really looked. And we had to assess was COVID accurate? or was he not? You know, there was a journalistic piece to it in addition to character-centered storytelling. And so I think the film speaks for itself

that it was never, it was just sort of what we found. You know, he said that Joey's, I think Joey broke his heart and I think I said, no, I think maybe you broke his heart. And that was not a planned. I wanted to address it. And when he said it, that became a moment for me. So he had an opportunity to reflect in that moment.

I think he said that he wished Kobe had come to him. That's a hard thing to ask someone. Right. Who doesn't speak the language. She doesn't really understand the culture, who at that point was mad. And who is still kind of functioning as your employee at that point. Right. At the 30,000 foot level, right? The nature of human relationships is often rupture and repair. We all transgress and we all have to apologize and make up for things we do. And so it's hard for an employee, someone who's a contract employee where you're their primary source of income, be able to communicate that, to know how to communicate it effectively when you don't speak the language. And I think that Kobe, did not fully understand the nuance of George's language so that if you read the words or you have

the words translated, he's an alchemist, he's a poet, he's this, all of like those extraordinary things. Suddenly, if you don't know the language and understand the nuance, you have one idea of who you are. And George really had another idea of who Kobayashi was. And I don't think Kobe understood until the very end, 10 years later, that George did not take this seriously as a sport. And even his language wasn't, was that superlative. I could be wrong. I don't think he fully grasped that. I think, not to say that he was duped. I just think that coming from a culture so different than ours, I don't think he could get the nuance,

especially as a non-English speaker. It also makes sense why Joey was so appealing because Joey takes it super seriously too. Right, they both took it super seriously. Yeah. And I think Kobe understood that there was an element of fun and that people find eating fun. And, I mean, he's not a dope.

competing against a bear like that whole yeah he's a very very smart he's a smart guy so it's not a question of intellect it was a question of i think of sophistication and attunement to american culture and i think that's why the hurt was so bad too when the xenophobic remarks started to come i think it it came out of the blue for him like why would anybody say anything mean to to a guy who eats hot talks. Which is a very fair question. When George Shea was making those kinds of comments and how permissible xenophobia was in the U.S. in the 2000s, let's just say.

I guess it was like a particular kind of tone to it. It had a particular tone. Yes, absolutely. Like post-9-11, it had a particular tone. But I don't think our xenophobic nature has changed. And look at the, what's being said about the border. It's insane. Xenophobia absolutely continuing and has changed is probably worse.

Based on the years of reporting, of interviewing, and of making media around this word, what is this a reflection of? I can tell you this, that I think that deep, deep, that I don't know if it's an American narrative as much as it is a human narrative in the sense that, Every single culture has very strict mores around food. And you realize that there's a real joy in breaking all the rules around food. And there is a real joy about breaking rules around human capacity. We look at great athletes and we're in awe.

And there's something awe-inspiring about how much these guys can eat. and also the real pleasure of the rule breaking. I think there's something so naughty about it at its core. So I think that's part of the passion of hot dogs. More so, I think, than sort of the Americana identification. I think that's an overlay, but I think it's oddiness. Every culture also has food competitions. Yeah.

or another. So I don't know. That's what I think. Thank you so much to Nicole. Go stream 30 for 30, the good, the bad, the hungry. Right fucking now. When it comes to the Netflix special surrounding Chestnut and Kobayashi, I have to admit, while it was thrilling to see the two matched up again after so long, and genuinely devastating, spoiler alert, to watch Kobe lose as his death. decades-long supporters looked on, there was this feeling of corporatism where sensationalism used to be. The hosts of the event, Rob Riggle and Nikki Bella, read the teleprompter and spoke to the viewers. And their presence spoke to clearly defined Netflix audiences, Riggle to their conservative fans and possibly some comedy nerds, and Nikki Bella to the W.W.E. Contingency that they were trying to court.

It was an event unto itself and an ad for something else, the algorithm reminding you to come back soon. Because remember, Netflix has a plan here. Just as they released the Vince McMahon Takedown docuseries just a couple months before starting to broadcast WWRWA, they're connecting the dots with the creative overlap between professional eating and professional wrestling and using the broadcast to promote their own product.

That's why we have WW-Star Nikki Bella co-hosting the event. That's why there are appearances from wrestler Ray Mysterio, and he presents Joey with the championship belt. That's why they're broadcasting Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson on their platform in November, even though their Vince McMahon docu-series criticizes McMahon for platforming Mike Tyson shortly after he was found guilty of raping a teenager in the 90s. Netflix is no better. But in a broader sense, outside of the WWE, it's why Netflix

is both sidesing the fucking Menendez brothers. It's a strategy, one that doesn't require a visible ringmaster taking sides. It's a way to take any side that a viewer will pay to engage with. There are no values to an algorithm, even when the creatives and producers, and particularly Joey and Kobe, are very, very passionate and smart about what they're doing. This isn't a criticism of the producers and the creatives on this broadcast at all. It's the algorithm that is powering it. So is Netflix Synergy, the PT Barnum of today? Not exactly, but I do think the algorithm that guides its programming, a guide clearly

and logically followed in this broadcast, is the new faceless ringmaster behind a lot of what we consume? Because at the end of the day, Barnum, McMahon, and Shea deserve to be taken to task, and I'm grateful to live in a culture where that conversation can actually be had, but they're fallible, fallible in a way that an opaque algorithm is not, a face that needs to present you with the person to hate and not just wordlessly serve it in front of you. And if you're listening to this show, you're probably eating it right up with me. At the time of this recording, Joey Chestnut is the world's champion eater. Takiro Kobayashi broke his personal best score on the Netflix broadcast and remains the first

eating celebrity who introduced the technique, the training, and the persona that has come to define American professional eating. and he's really and truly retired. And so, the grand narrative of Joey and Kobe, your 16th minute ends now. Thank you so much for listening. Obviously, this topic is my absolute addiction, and I hope that this angle brought something new for you.

To hear more about my journey to Vegas to see Joey and Kobe face off one more time, tune in Thursday for a mini-soupleadish. And finally, here's a curse cameo I ordered from George Shea in 2021. See you on Thursday. Ladies and gentlemen of America, citizens of the world, we now address Joey, a man of incredible strength, a warrior king who stands where the land meets the horizon,

steadfast and unshakable, upon whose shoulders God has arranged the flesh of an archangel. a man of immense wisdom, who, while he is faced by abundant challenges, will stand on the ramparts of victory overlooking a sea of truth, because he will never stop and he will never stand down, and he will never submit and he will never surrender, until his bones are cracked and splintered and scrape like chalk on pavement, until the very dome of heaven collapses, and the black avalanche of space, pours down around us, he will fight on. Why? Because the rock on which he stands is not a rock. It is the United States of America. And now it is go time. It is go time time. It is go, no, go, lock, end, load, love him, and leave him, smoke him if he got him see, when his see us see

on the side time time. It's condition red, all hands on deck, batten down the hatches, belly up to the bar, do it to it, feel the burn, fire in the hole, hold the phone, go bigger, go home, Game on, game day, game face, never say, never, never say, die, never give up, put up a shut up, ship out, show me the money, make my day, good night, Irene, wake me when it's over, it's go time. Onward! From Jamie. 16th Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and IHeart Radio. It is written, hosted, and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichten and Robert Evans. The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer, and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad 13. Voice acting is from Grant Crater. And pet shoutouts to our dog producer Anderson, my cats flea and Casper, and my pet rock bird who will out with us all. Bye. Hey, I'm Kurt Brown-Oller. And I am Scotty Landis, and we host Bananas, the podcast where we share

the weirdest, funniest, real news stories from all around the world. And sometimes from our guest personal lives, too. Like when Whitney Cummings recently revealed her origin story on the show. There's no way I don't already have rabies. This is probably just why my personality is like this. I've been surviving rabies for the past 20 years. New episodes of bananas drop every Tuesday in the exactly right network. Listen to bananas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the powerful stories I'll be mining on our upcoming 12th season of Family Secrets.

We continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? Answer, a new podcast called Wisecrack, where a comedian finds himself at the center of a chilling true crime story. Does anyone know what show they've come to see? It's a story. It's about the scariest night of my life. This is Wisecrack. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Our IHeart Radio Music Festival, presented by Capital One, is coming back to Las Vegas. Vegas. September 19th and 20th. On your feet. Streaming live only on Hulu. Ladies and gentlemen. Brian Adams. Ed Sheeran.

Phade. Cholrilla. Shelleyroll. Sean Fogarty. Lil Wayne. L.L. Cool J. Mariah Carey. Maroon 5.

Sammy Hagar. Tate McCray. The offspring. Tim McRaw. Tickets are on sale now at AXS.com. Get your tickets today. AXS.com. This is an I-Heart podcast.