Ep. 401: The Vince McMahon Sex Scandal Allegations Are About So Much More Than Professional Wrestling
Release Date: 02/13/2024
The Chauncey DeVega Show
There are two guests on this week’s episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. Dr. Justin Frank is a former professor of psychiatry at George Washington University. He is the author of several books including Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. Dr. Frank returns to the podcast and explains the importance of listening to and trusting our feelings and emotions in this time of fear, exhaustion, and collective trauma. Dr. Frank also interprets some of the common dreams that people experience during times of great stress and anxiety. He also shares his expert advice...
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This is a special joint episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show and The Truth Report. is a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley. His new book is Comeback: Routing Trumpism, Reclaiming the Nation, and Restoring Democracy's Edge. Professor Fish returns to the podcast to warn that the Democrats continue to be weak and ineffective in their opposition to Donald Trump and his MAGA movement because they refuse to be high-dominance leaders who shape the public mood and inspire their followers. The most recent example: The Democrats in...
info_outlineThe Chauncey DeVega Show
There are two guests on this week’s episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. Dr. Justin Frank is a former professor of psychiatry at George Washington University. He is the author of several books including Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. Dr. Frank reflects on how the American people and their collective sense of normal, safety, and security has been dramatically disrupted by Trump’s return to power and his “shock and awe” campaign against American democracy and society. Dr. Frank counsels that feelings of dread, fear, and anxiety are totally normal...
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Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and a Senior Advisor for Public Trust in Science at the Aspen Institute. He is the author of many books including On Disinformation and How to Talk to a Science Denier. Lee McIntyre explains how the American people are being systematically targeted in a disinformation and propaganda war by malign actors both here in the United States and from abroad with the goal of breaking reality, confusing them about the difference between facts and lies, undermining science and rational thought,...
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Dayton Ward is a New York Times bestselling author or co-author of more than forty novels and novellas. His most recent Star Trek novel is Pliable Truths. Ward’s essays and other writing have been featured at Tor.com, StarTrek.com, and Syfy.com Dayton Ward reflects on his decades-long love of Star Trek, what it means to be creative for a living and his decision to “take the leap” later in life to become a full-time professional writer, how Star Trek fandom has changed over the decades, and what his wishes are for Star Trek to become in the future. Chauncey DeVega journeys home...
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David Altheide is the Regents' Professor Emeritus on the faculty of Justice and Social Inquiry in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University and author of many books including his most recent, "Gonzo Governance: The Media Logic of Donald Trump." David Altheide explains how and why Donald Trump was and continues to be so amazingly skilled and gifted at manipulating the American news media – so much so that he was able to easily win back the presidency by defeating Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris. Altheide warns that Donald Trump is now a type of meme and character...
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Blair Kelley is an award-winning author, historian, and scholar of the African American experience. She is currently the Joel R. Williamson Distinguished Professor of Southern Studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and the incoming director of the Center for the Study of the American South, the first Black woman to serve in that role in the center’s thirty-year history. Her new book is Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class. Blair Kelly discusses the relationship of the Black working class to the American story of striving, struggle, hope, endurance, tragedy, and...
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Willy Vlautin is the guest on this week’s special Thanksgiving Day episode of the podcast. He is the author of seven novels including Lean on Pete, The Motel Life, and The Night Always Comes. His new book is The Horse. He is the founder of the bands Richmond Fontaine and The Delines. Willy reflects on his life journey and working-class roots, the challenges of being creative for a living, how music helps to sustain him, and what it means to him to write working-class stories about strivers and survivors and why janitors and waitresses deserve their own novels too. ...
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There are two guests on this week’s special post-Election 2024 episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. is an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter, filmmaker, and bestselling author. Her Substack newsletter is Bette Dangerous. She is the co-host and producer of RADICALIZED Truth Survives podcast. Heidi Cuda reflects on her emotions and feelings of rage, betrayal, demoralization and the dangerous allure of too much “hopium” following Donald Trump’s defeat of Kamala Harris. Heidi Cuda also shares her thoughts on the role that white privilege, white rage, racism and...
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There are four guests on this week’s special Election Day 2024 episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. Joe Walsh was a Republican congressman and a leading Tea Party conservative. He is now a prominent conservative voice against Donald Trump and the host of the podcast The Social Contract with Joe Walsh. is the former Managing Editor at Stars and Stripes and the author of Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters. His Substack newsletter is Enough, Already! is a journalist and author of several books, including The Gunman and His...
info_outlineIrv Muchnick is one of America’s leading sports writers and investigative journalists.
His essays and other writing have appeared in Sports Illustrated, People, The Washington Monthly, and the Sunday magazines of the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of the books Chris & Nancy; Wrestling Babylon; Concussion Inc., Without Helmets or Shoulder Pads: The American Way of Death in Football Conditioning; and Underwater: The Greed-Soaked Tale of Sexual Abuse in USA Swimming and Around the Globe.
Irv Muchnick reflects on why the recent “revelations” about Vince McMahon’s alleged Caligula-like sexual exploitation of an employee, harassment, and of creating a larger environment of sexual predation at the WWE/WWF should in no way be a surprise given what has been publicly known for decades.
Irv also offers some context from his long history of reporting on the subculture(s) of professional wrestling and other sports such as swimming and gymnastics about how and why sexual harassment and abuse are unfortunately all too common both in those spaces and across American society.
And Irv connects the dots between Donald Trump and Vince McMahon and what he describes as the “Trumpification” of American politics and life.
Chauncey reflects on nostalgia, innocence, joy, pleasure, fan culture, and how to reconcile loving professional wrestling (and other things) with knowing about the real-life drama and human cost that it brings to its participants and others in that world. Ultimately, is innocence bliss?
And Chauncey shares a story about being a hero in your own neighborhood (even when sick), thanks everyone for their support during his battle with the cooties, and in that spirit makes a public health announcement about the merits of folk medicine and the all-powerful asafetida bag.
At the end of this episode of the podcast, there is also an “Easter egg” bonus segment from the archives with writer, movie producer, and director Barry Blaustein where he reflects on making the landmark professional wrestling documentary Beyond the Mat.
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