Competitive Eating, Takeru Kobayashi, and Joey Chestnut

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Hello, and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now.

I'm Noah, and I'm going to be the lead masticator as you digest this week's episode.

But to make it all the way through, we're going to need a whole digestive tract.

First up, the liver of this episode, because I can most easily picture him in livery, Cecil Something Italian.

The uniform is bad for the feet.

It's livery with bunions.

And also joining us is the gallbladder of the show because he's the one with the most gall.

Tom Something Irish.

It's stones.

I have the most stones.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Gall stones.

I'm very unhealthy.

And also joining us tonight.

This show's large intestines because tall.

Because tall.

He's tall.

And right.

Tall.

Awesome.

Yep.

Colon something.

And finally,

the man you all know I would make the rectum even if it damn near killed him, Eli Bosni.

Okay, to be fair, the paramedics said, I'm lucky to be alive, Noah.

Lucky.

He did.

Now, of course, you might be wondering who the pharynx, esophagus, stomach, pancreas, small intestine, and anus of the show are.

Well,

those are our patrons.

And if you too would like a chance to be this show's anus, be sure to stick around to the end of the show.

And with that out of the way, tell us, Heath, what person plays Think Concept Phenomenon or event will we be talking about today?

We're going to be talking about competitive eating, the amazing sport, and its greatest rivalry.

Rivalry.

All right.

And would you like to do a weird, if you can't beat Tom, join Tom preamble?

Yeah.

So there's a lot of important things going on in the world right now with

far-reaching consequences for humankind.

And a big thanks to Tom for letting me borrow his Adirondack chair for your status and his dock of contemplative sadness for this.

So, given these recent events, I've had lots to think about.

I'm sure you have too.

As an American sishet white guy, it feels like my people, my idiot people, need to have a moment of introspection.

And where do we go to find answers?

ESPN and their amazing documentary series known as 30 for 30, or what Ann calls behind the music for dude bros.

So I watched one of their documentaries that truly captures the essence of what it means to be American.

It's about competitive hot dog eating.

And I'm pretty sure Alexis de Tocqueville said the same thing or something.

I was just

searching men choking down massive amount of sausage, and look what popped up.

It was

two things.

Yeah.

The documentary is called The Good, the Bad, the Hungry.

Oh, loud.

And it's the story of the greatest rivalry in the history of competitive eating.

Nay, the history of sports.

Nay!

The history of competition as a concept between Takeru Kobayashi of Japan and Joseph Christian Chestnut of the United States.

They're the two greatest eaters of all time.

Of all time?

Heath?

Are we sure?

Do we have a Paleolithic cave drawings of early man stuffing their faces with woolly mammoth burgers?

We should.

Until we know Fred Flintstone's pterodactyl dog numbers, I don't feel comfortable with that claim.

Thank you, Tom.

He's not even considering me a trust.

Exactly.

But for the record, Heath, you had me at competitive eating is the most American thing you can think of.

Thank you.

And that giant rack of ribs that Flintstone had, I feel like that's a great thing for one of these contests that they that's an awesome starter play, right?

All right, so I'll start with a little background on the majestic sport known as competitive eating.

The sport traces its roots all the way back to the 1600s.

One of the earliest notable athletes was Nicholas Wood, who was known as the great eater of Kent.

And some of his amazing talent

and some of his amazing talent was recorded in a 1630 pamphlet called The Admirable Teeth and Stomachs Exploits of Nicholas Wood.

According to the pamphlet, Mr.

Wood's many feats is a K and the astronomical large ass.

Cecil, thank you.

I also, I love that, like, they're like so excited his teeth make through the process.

You're just like, well, you've got to imagine back in the 1630s, having teeth was probably a pretty big deal.

Like, he was British, right?

That was a big thing.

Yeah.

I was going to say, I've been to Manchester recently.

Right.

Having teeth there.

That's chancing.

The admirable teeth is actually at the bottom of Michael Marshall's business card.

If you look, it's a

all right.

So, according to the pamphlet, Mr.

Wood's many feats of gastronomical largesse included eating 84 rabbits in one meal.

Jesus, what?

Eating approximately 400 pigeons in another.

What?

So many big things.

And just assuming a whole entire raw sheep in one sitting sitting as well.

Raw sheep.

Excluding the wool, the horns, and the bones.

Sissy.

Wow.

Not a lot of people know this, but if you find the right strand of muscle fiber first, you can just inhale the rest of the meat off the sheep like a long spaghetti strip.

I miss weird scene from Lady in the Transport.

Spins while it does it.

It's insane.

I miss.

I thought it was romantic between the two of us, Cecil.

I miss when.

Right, Cecil?

Yes.

Thank you.

Cheers.

I I miss when all it took to be a variety act was a pamphlet lying about your variety act.

That's

what all you have to do is.

900 pigeons.

I did 900 pigeons.

Does he have to be remotely believable?

What are you going to read my pamphlet, person in the 1600s?

No, you're not the.

Look at my teeth.

Look at them.

I'm admirable on these fucking teeth.

I've got topsies and bottomsies.

And Stomax galore.

Oh, God.

Okay, so for his amazing skills, the great eater of Kent became a celebrity, and he often performed at festivals and fairs.

He was also known for accepting challenges from wealthy patrons, and he almost always won.

We only know about two times that he lost a wager.

The first loss was when he did not finish the entire ale-soaked loaf of bread that he gambled on.

And another time, he took a bet from a local nobleman named Sir William Sedley, who organized a party around an eating challenge.

Details of the food are, very sadly, lost to history, but I looked for so long to try to find this.

But we know that Nikki Wood, he gave it his all, but eventually fell unconscious into a food coma for eight hours.

When he woke up, Sir William locked the great eater of Kent in the stocks to publicly shame him for his defeat in the bet.

No, I get it.

My IBS does the same thing every time I have chipotle.

So the

tradition lives on.

A loaf of an ale-soaked loaf of bread?

Dude ate a whole uncooked sheep like a cartoon vacuum and he couldn't eat a loaf of bread soaked it.

Was there fucking, how much ale was there?

Was there a small lake of ale with a tiny bread in it?

What is happening?

Yeah, I feel like a lot of this was just like 1600s Tom going, oh, darn, I only ate 80% of the free food you kept giving me at the party party you organized for the purposes of giving me a lot of food and what a loser am I?

Nothing was like that.

And you got to like live at a castle for a night.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're going to do Tom Gettysburg.

Another big milestone in the evolution of the sport came with the emergence of the pie eating contest as a major event.

The first recorded pie eating contest took place in Toronto in 1878 as a fundraiser.

The prize for the winner was, quote, a handsomely bound book.

There you go.

Yeah, ironically, it was a diet book called, How to Lose Weight by Not Eating 40 Fucking Pies in a Sitting.

All right, moving ahead to the early 20th century, and the sport started expanding out to many other foods, sometimes all at once.

And New York City became a major hub.

One of the biggest names during this era was Frank Dotzler, and he rose to fame after a contest in 1909 when he consumed 275 oysters,

eight and one-eighth pounds of steak,

12 rolls, three large pies, large ones, and washed it down with 11 cups of coffee.

That event was organized by a delightful group called the Manhattan Fat Men's Club.

Ooh, any word on if they're still taking members?

They don't take people to members.

11 cups of coffee.

That is adorable.

Put me in, coach.

Right, yes.

All right.

Another chapter in the evolution of competitive eating is a niche field called untimed gluttony.

This involved eating absurd things over long.

Autobiography.

Seems so dragged.

Yeah, right.

Your gluttony is timed.

Come on.

Mr.

Gluttony

goes off when it's

time for the gluttony to stop.

So these untimed gluttony things were often a competition to get into the Guinness Book of World Records.

For For example, the standing record for eating an entire ox is 42 days.

I want to point out that 42 days is a unit of time.

It's a lot of scaramuccias.

I don't like how many members of this podcast heard that fact and thought, I could beat 40 days.

I did think that.

Absolutely.

When you eat a large mammal, about 60% of its live weight is edible meat.

Ox weighs weighs about a thousand pounds, looking at about 600 pounds of meat.

Sounds like a lot, but for simplicity, we can use a standard curry household conversion chart.

This is about 300 rotisserie chickens.

Over 42 days.

I use a similar system.

Over 42 days, it's seven chickens a day, three meals a day.

You only have to eat two and a half, two and two and a third chickens.

I'm not saying I could beat this record, but I'm confident I can make a good show.

Fully agree.

Let's do that.

We're going to beat that.

We're going to get to Guinness.

That sounds fun.

I'll eat that.

Here's the thing, though.

Guinness discontinued the untimed gluttony category in 1989.

Imagine why.

Yeah, well, mostly because it's fucking crazy.

Yes, they catalogue.

It was supposed to be the rest of the goodest book of world records.

A bunch of balanced individuals exploring humanity's limits.

Not a crazy guy with fingernails.

A lot less

dangerous.

I've been on a pogo stick for six weeks.

L, stop eating that fucking live elephant.

What is wrong with you?

Know that I'm not going to be in a book someone jerks off to at the library.

I don't know what the point of it is.

Okay, but Guinness kept one entry in that untimed gluttony genre just for its historic value.

Under Greatest Omnivore, they list Michel Lotito, also known as Monsieur Mangetou or Mr.

Eat It All in French.

He was known for consuming entire bicycles, shopping carts, televisions, beds, and most famously, a Cessna 150 airplane.

Huh.

The Cessna took him about two years.

He'd break the metal components into small pieces.

I hope so.

Yeah, that's helpful.

He'd also drink lots of mineral oil ahead of time, and then he would somehow swallow and digest all the metal, or it just fucking stayed there, or he was lying.

Well,

probably.

According to a Snopes report from 2022, somebody was like, I'm going to look into this way later.

Here's the approximate quote from Snopes.

It said, come on.

But

Snopes did find evidence of him performing some of this metal eating on stage.

And according to an estimate by Guinness, he ate about nine.

tons of metal between 1959 and 1997, his career.

Mr.

Eat It All died in 2006 officially of natural causes.

Yeah, and the death certificate just says iron efficiency.

And that brings us to the Super Bowl of competitive eating, the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island.

Hell yeah.

I'm sure Chicago's is very good, too.

It's hard to make if you're all about onions and peppers.

It's broke.

Yeah, the celery salt is good, though.

That's cool.

So the origin story of the Nathan's event event has the first one taking place in 1916 when four American immigrants made a big spectacle of competitively gorging on hot dogs to show off their patriotism.

I get amazing.

That story was mentioned by numerous publications.

Displaying as they're stuffing it in there.

But yeah, that story was mentioned by numerous publications over the years, including the New York Times.

But we eventually learned that a promoter made up the whole thing in the early 1970s when he was putting together the first actual Nathan's contest.

Which, again, is an incredibly American thing to do, right?

Right.

Yes.

Yeah.

No, nothing can be more American than lying about that same thing would be, right?

That's just a rule.

Here's the thing.

Even now, there's a big dispute about when the first official Nathan's contest happened.

According to a statement from Nathan's, quote, we've held the contest every year since 1916, except for 1941 as a protest of the war in Europe

and 1971 as a protest to political unrest in America.

So they're lying.

That's lying.

The only record of a Nathan's contest from 1916 to 1971 was in 1967.

According to an article from the Reading Eagle, June 30th of 1967 was the 100th anniversary of the invention of the hot dog by Charles Feltman, who named it after his hometown of Frankfurt, Germany, the Frankfurter.

And the winner of the centennial celebration contest was a 400-pound truck driver from Brooklyn named Walter Paul, who allegedly set a new record with 17 hot dogs in one hour flat.

And I say allegedly because there is an aggressive edit war on Wikipedia about this record.

That includes the mention of a non-sanctioned contest in 1959, but this should count, during which a quote one-armed carnival worker ate 18 and a half hot dogs in one hour flat.

One-armed carnival worker doesn't seem like a unique identifier at all.

The Tilta Whirl is a cruel mischief.

They go for a high five, and you think it's going to be so cool.

Okay, so there was some of Nathan's contest in Coney Island starting in 1972.

But for me, the real origin of the event was in 1979 or the beginning of what I call the modern open era.

They finally organized a set of rules and the winner had to eat the most hot dogs in a 10-minute format.

I wanted to see the version of the hot dog eating contest before there were rules.

The fucking no-holds bar.

Yeah, it got crazy.

A lot of one-armed people.

Yeah.

Guy's wearing an old-timey football helmet for some reason

i thought he lost his arm yeah

for some reason a ninja shows up and wins the third one

whatever

so that event remained nothing but a small spectacle for decades but then

a star was born that would be takeru kobayaki kobayaji

Thank you.

He took the sport of competitive eating to the next level, giving it a place in the pantheon of international athletic competition.

I would say at the top.

His career started in the late 90s when the sport was mostly found on TV shows in Japan.

And then in 2000, he made a big splash by winning the Gluttony Championship on the Japanese variety show TV Champion by eating 16 bowls of ramen in one hour.

What the?

What?

And he revolutionized that event by adopting a new technique that they'd never seen in a ramen ramen contest.

He lifted all the noodles out of the bowl, allowing them to briefly drip dry and cool down, and then he put them all in his mouth at once.

And then he chugged the liquid part after.

It was a big moment for the sport.

This time the people watching were puking too.

So it's a horrible.

So Kobayashi's ramen victory on TV Champion led to an appearance the following year on Food Battle Club.

Now this was the big time in Japan.

And Kobayashi won the season.

Yep.

Thank you.

He won the season-long competition in dominant fashion over the previous champion.

And his mentor of eating, Masahiro Tateshi.

I tried so hard to learn more about this eating mentor, but I couldn't find anything.

I found a bunch of stuff in Japanese, but then I tried to translate it.

It still led to nothing.

But it's definitely like a...

like a Yoda situation in my head and it's fucking awesome.

Like, choo or choo not.

There is no try.

Like something you gotta ask with that mentor relationship.

Are you gonna eat that crump?

Here's the thing.

Sadly, like Tom to me.

Food Battle Club got canceled in 2002 after an amateur bread eating contest led to the death of a teenager in Japan.

And eating shows were blamed for, you know, promoting obviously dangerous ideas.

Kid gets caught eating entire packs of hot dogs in his room.

I learned it from walking you, dad.

See him on the street later.

He's got the pack of hot dogs rolled up in his sleeve, like cigarettes or something.

So now you're going to eat the whole pack

while I watch.

So I googled this because dying of eating too much bread doesn't make any fucking sense.

And of the 13 deaths listed on Wikipedia as a result of eating contests, All of them choked to death, which seems more like deaths that should be under failing to know the Heimlich Heimlich maneuver at a putting stuff in your breathing hole public event, but whatever.

I guess that's the eating contest's fault because that's where the breathing was.

I don't know.

Yeah, and those guys are so fucking stuffed.

And you do the Heimlich, you have to start at the feet and squeeze them like a tuba tourist.

They didn't die from the eating, they died from the choking.

You're not supposed to pour the coffee on your lap.

I don't know how to tell you people these things.

So, that time period in the early 2000s is considered to be the golden age of competitive eating in Japan, but it waned afterward.

So Kobayashi decided to ramp it up and bring his talent to the world stage.

And the U.S., of course, doesn't care about kids dying very much.

So the American TV market jumped right in.

Kobayashi already had a foothold in the U.S.

after winning the 2001 Nathan's contest.

And over the next few years, he would absolutely destroy the competition in just about every type of eating event.

And unlike the rest of the field, with mostly extremely large people, Kobayashi is only

5'8 and about 130 pounds at this point.

Despite the size disadvantage, he now holds an impressive number of world records.

That includes, but is definitely not limited to,

100 boneless hot dogs in 10 minutes, what?

93 hamburgers in 8 minutes.

150 rice balls equaling 20 pounds in 30 minutes.

62 slices of pizza in 12 minutes.

337 buffalo wings in 30 minutes.

13 grilled cheese sandwiches in one minute.

And 57 cow brains in 15 minutes.

That last one was at the 2005 Glutton Bowl on Fox.

So on top of his many records, Kobayashi also invented several new techniques for both training Kobayashi.

I did.

I did it.

He did.

I just thought he was mute.

I think we have to do it again every time I see it.

Kobayashi.

Thank you.

Several new techniques for both training and competing.

Which is damn impressive when you consider how long eating's been around.

Right?

He came up with a new, like new eating.

This dude was

creative.

And there's one in particular, one of his new techniques that's become especially important during the Nathan's contest.

Instead of just chomping down on hot dogs and washing them down with water, Kobayashi started using a pair of techniques known as the Solomon technique and clearing.

So he grabs two hot dogs out of their buns and he snaps them each in half absolutely perfectly based on like thousands of hours of practice at snapping hot dogs in half.

And then he eats those four halves in a bundle.

That's the Solomon technology.

I feel like that's not what happens in that story in the Bible.

Nobody gave him a chance.

Nobody gave him a chance, but he would have.

He would have.

Not exactly the message, but you could kind of shove it in there.

Baby in water and

he snaps the baby like a fucking kid cat.

He's just like

so.

After he solomons the hot dogs, he dips the buns in his watercolour to soften them, and then he eats the buns wet.

That's called clearing.

And in order to saturate the buns faster, he uses hot water.

Oh,

hot water or hot, hot dog.

I don't know.

I guess after a while, probably hot, hot doggy.

Yeah, it feels a little

like

pretty hot, doggy.

Cecil is going to die.

Cecil is going to die on this episode.

I've read ahead, Cecil, get so much fucking groceries back.

Urine would break down the buns even faster.

Nasty.

Jesus.

So the Solomon technique and the clearing, they became such dominant strategies that it led to a controversial move by some of the hot dog, hamburger, and other fun-based contests to ban the use of the dunking.

And many world records now specify with dunking or no dunking allowed.

Now, I know it sounds weird.

to wash your food off, but Coney Island is in New York and everything there has a thin layer of garbage juice on it, so it's just,

but the water in Coney Island is actually just concentrated garbage juice, so

washing it wouldn't make any sense in that situation.

Even the raccoons don't bother, they're just like, oh, you go to Coney Island, you press the drink, and you found like hot dog water comes

if you're lucky.

If you're lucky,

Bill, we got another hot dog stuck in there.

You got to get the rooter.

Oh, Kobayashi.

Kobayashi!

All right, so that brings us to the origin of the greatest sporting rivalry of all time.

It all started on July 4th of 2006 at the Nathans Contest.

Kobayashi came in as the undisputed goat of both the Nathans contest and the overall sport.

His reign began in 2001 when the previous champion set a new world record with 31 hot dogs.

Except not really, because Kobayashi also set a new world record with 50 hot dogs.

She loaded up.

What are you saying right now?

What?

He dominated the field for the next five years, winning every single time.

Except the time he lost to a bear.

He did.

It was a bear contest.

That's true.

Excuse me.

Yeah, no,

he lost.

He did have to eat against a bear on a TV show during that stretch, but he dominated the Nathan's contest for those five years, no problem.

He almost won against the bear because the bear was distracted because there were TV cameras and stuff.

Yeah, right.

Because the bear was just going like, what the?

But then the bear noticed and was like, oh, I'm a bear.

Here's the thing.

Little did he know, a scrappy kid from Indiana

named Joseph Christian Chestnut was ready to emerge.

Chestnut actually finished third place.

at the Nathan's contest in 2005 with 32 hot dogs, but that number wasn't even showing up on Kobayashi's radar.

But during that same year, Chestnut had drastically upped his game, kind of quietly, though.

For example, Chestnut was the world champion of deep-fried asparagus for 2005,

counting 6.3 pounds in 11 minutes for investing the very highly ranked eater, Dick Lefebvre.

Now,

the people of Indiana actually crowded around his house after he got back to get a whiff of the asparagus pee because the scent is just a huge improvement over Indiana air.

It's actually way better.

Smells way better.

Yeah, Cecil, true story.

I was driving with Haley from New York to Chicago and after hours and hours of uneventful driving, just pipes up and was like, oh, God, what is that smell?

I didn't even have to check our GPS to know that we were now in Indiana.

We were there for two hours of this.

I don't know.

It's either Coney Island or Indiana.

I think it's Indiana.

So also worth noting, in early 2006, Chestnut qualified for the upcoming Nathan's contest at a regional event by eating 50 HDB.

That's hot dogs and buns, the official unit of the sport.

For those in the know.

So as July 4th approached, there was a big buzz, at least among the eating insiders, that Kobayashi might finally get dethroned.

And the event was epic.

It starts with the longtime MC, George Shea.

He's a giant liar.

His story is ridiculous.

But he gets slowly raised on a platform high above the giant crowd of eating fans, and he bellows into the microphone.

They say that competitive eating is the battleground upon which God and Lucifer wage war for men's souls, and they are right.

For this is a battle of the ages.

This is a battle of the Titans, the early gods, who came to Earth only once in only one location, and that is at the corner of surf and stillwell avenue at nathan's famous inconey island okay one you can find a transcript of all of george shea's introductions on the internet and he's the fucking greatest they are fucking incredible two i'm pretty sure he's the guy who wrote that introduction to project 2025

Well, at least now I know who to outsource my essay intros if I ever need a light.

Yeah, he listens.

Strong, Tommy.

If he listens, he turns the pot off after your intros, Tom.

He's like, all right, well, they're done with the interesting part.

So George Shea does that big preamble, and the finalists, they all get introduced, including the two favorites, Kobayashi and Joey Chestnut.

And here are the official rules, as governed by...

Major League Eating or the MLE, which is sanctioned, of course, by the International Federation of Competitive Eating.

That's really a lot of politics.

Yeah, it is.

It really, really is.

We'll get to some of it.

So, the field usually has about 20 finalists.

It's a weighty subject.

And that includes any past champion of the Nathans contest, the winners of the regional qualifiers for that season, two wild cards who had the highest average qualifier scores without winning first place in a qualifier, and occasionally an eater who gets a special invitation from MLE, like an honorary degree or whatever.

This year's Jake Paul.

For the contest in 2006, competitors got 12 minutes.

They moved that down to 10 minutes starting in 2008 and ever since.

Partially eaten hot dogs do count, and the granularity of measurement, if you're wondering, is eighths of a hot dog.

And any hot dogs and buns held in your mouth at the final buzzer do in fact count if you finish them during the next approximately two minutes.

This rule led to a popular technique called chipmunking.

Come on, where you know,

chubby bunny a giant mouthful of hot dogs and buns at the last second.

Every rule that you mention makes this sport exponentially more gross.

I'm sorry.

It's so bad.

It's so bad.

Well, one other important rule is about vomiting.

Case in point.

So the official sports term is reversal of fortune.

That leads to a red card and a disqualification at the Nathan's contest.

And that applies during and after the buzzer.

There's a no vomit timer that extends a bit beyond the eating timer and the chipmunking timer.

And I bet the argument not to be the who is vomiting guy is fierce.

I just want to point out that this rule is there to ensure that whatever damage you do to your body is lasting damage.

Yeah.

Right.

I also want to know the bylaws about bringing like really gross pictures to suddenly show show to your competitors at inopportune moments of the game.

Oh, yeah.

That's going to show up like not having showered in a few weeks.

Yes, you know what?

Really?

No, I really, I checked all the rules.

There's nothing about those things.

Interesting.

Okay.

So bring like a jar of Indiana air with you and just basket at people.

No, that's cruel.

That's just uncalled for.

So they're ready to go.

There's a big countdown from 10.

And the eating begins.

Kobayashi and Chestnut positioned right next to each other in the center part of the long table with all the other finalists.

And immediately, everyone could tell Kobayashi and Chestnut are the only two eaters that matter.

After two minutes and 30 seconds, they each had 19 hot dogs down.

Cheese.

The closest competitor

had only 13.

And then, with about seven minutes remaining, The unthinkable started happening.

Joey Chestnut took the lead for for the first time in five years.

Thank you.

There we go.

We got two teams.

For the first time in five years, Kobe Ashi was losing.

And the crowd of, you know, patriotic racists in Brooklyn started roaring.

But then, thanks to a late surge, Kobe Ashi pulled back ahead and won with 53 and 68

HDB, besting his own standing world record and narrowly holding off Chestnut's final score of 52.

Joey Chestnut wept that day, but

he vowed to be back.

Yeah, a single hot dog-shaped and flavored tear rolled down his chinpunk cheeks, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

All right, well, it's always a good idea to give competitive eaters a moment to themselves after a big competition.

So we're going to step away for a little apropos of nothing.

Where?

Where am I?

Hey, Penright, the International Council of Superintelligent Beings calls you to represent Earth.

If your race is chosen, we will share our technology and knowledge with you, launching humanity into a new golden age of peace and prosperity.

Oh my God.

Amazing.

Now, one human human activity will be chosen at random.

You will explain and defend it to represent your species.

At random?

Yes, at random.

And your choice is

the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest.

Oh.

Can I like...

Can I like spin again?

Is there like a reason?

No, you must defend this activity.

Right.

Okay.

Okay, so uh, yeah, it's a contest.

Like a sport.

It's a real good good time.

Lots of people watch it.

They enjoy watching it.

It's cool.

Excellent.

But what is the contest?

It's just.

Well,

it's how many hot dogs a person can eat.

Hot dogs.

Yeah, they're like tubes of meat, sort of.

And you'll see who can eat the most as a contest?

Yep.

Uh-huh.

Yeah, um, we do.

But aren't there like starving humans on your planet?

Yeah, ah, there are

a lot of those.

That's true.

I see.

Can I just please do another one, like a respin or something?

Humans do a bunch of really good stuff.

Fine.

You may do the next on the list.

The Nazi Holocaust.

You know what?

Let's stick with the hot dogs.

Sure.

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And we're back when we last left off.

Kobiashi thought he had that chestnut swallowed, but I feel like it's about to come back up.

Heath, take it away.

All right.

So following the epic loss in 2006, Joey Chestnut went into seclusion.

And he started.

Sorry, he went into the bathroom.

That's right.

Seclusion.

Right away that.

And then seclusion.

And he started training like fucking Rocky in the Russian snow cabin.

He was serious.

And he realized he needed to come up with some innovations of his own, especially in terms of strength training.

Yeah, thank you.

So

he made himself some custom equipment for that training.

That would include a biting ball,

which is

a chew toy, but you're allowed to call it whatever you want.

And he chews on the ball to get all those jaw muscles nice and yoked.

Okay, I feel like if the thing that fails you in an eating contest is your jaw, the thing that actually failed you is society.

True.

Look, I'm sorry, but if your training camp involves gnawing on a Kong dog toy, you've got to radically rethink your life.

Strong disagree.

Now I want to see an eating contest where like there's a Kong for humans and like getting into it is part of the contest.

So Chestnut also fashioned himself a set of weights.

to build the muscles in his neck.

He actually shows off some of the workout routine in the documentary on ESPN, and it's fucking amazing.

The weights are just like bags of whatever that he tied to the chew toy with a spare shoelace.

Sometimes he uses two gallon bags of water for the weight, which is about 16.7 pounds.

And he tilts his head back against the weight to simulate his emotions of speed eating.

Okay, so, all right, so I know it's my fault for doing the music, but now I'm picturing him running up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum with the water bags washing on either side, holding them with his mouth.

I just want to point out that we knew this documentary existed and we thought people were going to elect Kamala Harris.

I mean

that's on us, right?

What the fuck?

I thought Trump was going to win and this is why I'd seen you.

You soon told me.

Yeah, I did tell you.

So Chestnut, he did.

Chestnut also invented an exercise that combines a core strength workout with a technique called air gulping.

It's very similar to breathing.

He does crunches on a bench and swallows big gulps of air on each rep.

He also developed a method of power burping that involves squishing his stomach with his hands to squeeze out air pockets and maximize volume to fit more food.

The official term in the lexicon of the sport is

beanie baby training.

Sorry, guys, I can't hang out.

I'm training to be a hot dog Bellows, so I've got to

be busy.

You know, exercise routine say consult a doctor before beginning any new program.

That is because of this.

And CrossFit, but a lot of them.

They both do burpees, though.

So Chestnut is almost entirely focused on training.

He's in seclusion.

He's at the snow cabin.

And meanwhile, Kobayashi is becoming a pop culture icon.

Kobayashi ends up in TV commercials and a cartoon on SNL by Robert Smeigel.

And he's even mentioned on The Simpsons.

And during the few times that Chestnut comes out of seclusion to compete, he keeps losing to Kobayashi Ashi.

That includes the legendary Johnsonville Bratwurst Championship in Sheboygan and the Crystal Hamburger Square-Off when Kobayashi set a new world record of 97 burgers,

easily topping chestnut with only 91.

Oh, but if those are crystal burgers, that should count as like eight.

So Kobayashi was already the best in the world.

And the competition from Chestnut, it's only making him better.

But then in the spring of 2007,

tragedy struck.

Kobayashi lost his mother to cancer.

And he broke his training regimen during a period of mourning.

And then with the Nathan's contest right around the corner, Kobayashi had to ramp up his training at the last minute.

And it led to a serious injury, arthritis of the jaw.

Oh, yaw hurt.

Yeah, it's terrifying.

And, you know, if you're not an insider, that's like the ACL tear of competitive eating is.

getting a jaw injury, especially arthritis.

I remember the exact moment this happened, like in my real life, because I was watching Sports Center and during their injury report, it said something like, you know, Derek Jeter hamstring and it said, Kobayashi, jaw.

Boomers remember JFK being shot.

Millennials remember 9-11.

And Gen Z, you have Kobayashi's jaw.

So Kobayashi's jaw turned into a big controversy.

And that's because a week before the announcement of the arthritis, Chestnut competed in a qualifier event in Arizona and set a new world record with 59 and 4 eighths HDB, besting Kobayashi's record by almost six full HDB.

So when Chestnut heard about the injury, he thought it was a bullshit lie.

Yeah, I mean, like, dead moms are no excuse.

That's valid.

And Chestnut told the sports media that the whole thing felt pretty suspect given the timing.

Of course, Kobayashi was furious when he heard about the accusation, and despite his debilitating condition, he decided to to show up for the Nathan's contest to make a point.

Yeah, he had a gigantic jaw brace on his head around like just wrapped.

Hey, when they walk out, do they have to flip coins to see whose walk-on music gets to be weird ass eaten?

You do have walk-on music.

I'm picturing Kobiyashi at this point having to like chew with just the top of his head instead of his jaw.

Right?

Like a fucking head-banging Pez dispenser or something.

He looks like Skeletor laughing while he's eating.

So heading into July 4th weekend of 2007, Major League Eating did a press conference before the big event.

And the MC, George Shea, announced that Kobayashi would be heroically playing through the injury, known scientifically as jothritis.

And they made

that was the vibe.

They made Kobayashi give a visual demonstration of how his jaw was physically incapable of opening all the way.

It looked like OJ trying on the glove.

It was so silly.

So people were assuming Kobayashi had no chance, but he had a trick up his sleeve.

He consulted with one of the world's top experts in mandibular athletics.

And okay, he really did this.

And he made

learned about a special technique for opening the jaw at a weird angle to overcome some of that jarthritis disadvantage.

You guys doing it?

It was kind of sideways at a weird angle.

Yeah.

You guys trying it?

I had your necks.

I'm doing it.

I'm doing it.

I sure the fuck am, you like.

Yeah.

So Kobayachi, he talked to that doctor expert.

He figured it out.

And against all odds, he sets a new world record: 63 HDB.

However, Kobayashi technically had a reversal of fortune right at the Hauser value.

Come on, so many people were calling for a DQ,

but Kobayashi actually caught the reversal in his hand and ate it.

Oh, because he's a warrior.

Okay, I'm out.

Text me when we get to the questions.

I'm going to burn my headphones in the meantime.

That's Jesus Christ.

So fuck.

Why did you do this to me, Heath?

Why would you do this to me?

It's about

amazing.

How dare you?

It's an amazing anthropology.

So the judges conferred and they decided no DQ and Kobayashi's record stood, but not really, because Joey Chestnut also sets a new world record with 66 HDB at the exact same time, and he became the champion.

Chestnut finally took down his nemesis.

I cannot emphasize the importance of making sure you're not behind by three tot dogs before you eat a handful of your own moment.

Yeah.

Agreed.

There's a slowboard going behind you.

You got to check that shit.

Yeah.

Like,

is there some terrible punishment for coming in second?

Because like, unless they're throwing my family in a North Korean work camp, I'm going home with a smaller trophy here.

Right, but he was still going to come in second.

Yeah.

He ate that handful of puke for the love of the game, man.

Exactly.

Thank you, Noah.

Well, maybe he hadn't reached his 20,000 calorie and 10-minute limit.

So following the huge win in 2007, Chestnut's career skyrocketed.

He starts winning everything, but Kobayashi wasn't going away.

After a full recovery from the drawthritis, Kobayashi was back at Nathan's the next year in 2008.

This time, the game clock was moved down to 10 minutes from 12.

And at the final buzzer in the 2008 contest, it was a dead even tie at 59 HDB, giving them each a shared world record for the 10-minute format.

So at that point, they go to overtime in the form of a lightning round.

Five hot dogs as fast as you can.

And Joey Chestnut barely pulls it out by seven seconds.

Chestnut finished in 50 seconds, all five hot dogs, defeating Kobe Ashi's time of 57 seconds to get the overtime victory.

So the American beat the other athlete by cheating when he was hurt and then winning a totally different contest.

Okay.

When does he drop a second unnecessary nuke?

So Chestnut's dominance at Nathan's, it continued, including a win in 2009 and a new 10-minute world record for that year.

And then in 2010, another giant controversy rocks the eating world.

We learned that Major League Eating was trying to establish a near monopoly by engaging in some very unethical business practices.

Despite Kobeashi being the superstar who put the entire sport on the map and single-handedly making MLE profitable, They were demanding that he sign an exclusive contract which wouldn't let him compete in any unsanctioned events events by other promotions and they wouldn't let him compete in the nathan's contest without a contract so the 2010 event it went ahead without the godfather of the sport but kobayashi did show up in koney island in protest and a huge crowd of his ardent fans showed up as well with signs that said free kobe and chanting let him eat it was amazing so this swell of support led to the event security team leading Kobayashi onto the stage to address the crowd.

But then chaos broke out.

Somebody from MLE, allegedly George Shea, he's a piece of shit, got on the radio and told the security team to arrest Kobayashi instead of leading him up.

And so he gets tackled into a fence.

Then he gets handcuffed and literally taken away in a police car.

He got charged with resisting arrest, trespassing, and obstructing government administration.

Of a hot dog contest.

What?

They should have taken him to jail in the Oscar Wire meeting.

I think I'm an amazing.

Do you think they put him in the mask thing just in case?

Yeah.

I would have.

He could have a reversal of fortune at any minute.

Now it sprays more.

Well, you know, Annabel like the thing.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

They answered those cuffs.

So Kobayashi gets taken to jail, but the charges were eventually dismissed by a Brooklyn judge.

After the incident, he told reporters that he ate a sandwich and a glass of milk in jail.

Obviously, their first question was, What'd you eat in jail?

That was what he ate.

He also added, Really funny.

I wish they had hot dogs in jail.

Yeah, I mean, his letters from a Birmingham jail were admittedly much less inspiring.

Peak for yourself.

I disagree.

Specifically, disagree, Tom.

I think both were great shit.

Peak won't.

No.

No.

My K Jr.

It's MLK.

He wins.

I'm going back.

I'm switching back.

So since then, Kobayashi has not competed in a single Nathan's event.

And MLE, ever since, very deservedly lost a bunch of money.

Their TV ratings went down.

And sponsors like Old Navy, Heinz, and Pepto-Bismol pulled out in solidarity with Kobayashi.

Okay, so I get why Pepto-Bismol is there and everything, but I feel like Heinz had ulterior motives for pulling out of the eat a handful of your own vomit contest, right?

So, when the 2011 event came around, Kobayashi was still banned.

So, he figured out a pretty cool alternative.

He competed at a different venue at the exact same time as the Nathan's event.

He set up a live broadcast from a rooftop bar in Manhattan with a live telecast of the Nathan's event playing next to him on a screen on stage.

He got two official judges from the New York Athletic Association to observe, and he set a new world record of 69 HDB in 10 minutes.

Fuck up!

Testing the 62 for Chestnut on the simulcast screen next to him at the time.

Now, lots of people want to put an asterisk on that record, but those people are bigots who hate freedom.

It counts.

So the contract dispute continued, and the epic rivalry between Kobayashi and Chestnut seems to be over.

Chestnut, to his credit, put together a streak of eight Nathan's contests in a row and won 15 out of 16 from 2007 to 2023.

Asterisk.

But the story wasn't quite done, mostly because MLE is a horrible, corrupt organization.

Fast forward to this year when MLE

also banned Joby Chestnut.

Yeah, no, he signed a sponsorship deal with a hot dog brand other than Nathan's.

So MLE got mad at Joey Chestnut about that, and they refused to let him compete this year.

And Nathan's was extra mad because the rival brand was Impossible Foods and they're vegan hot dogs.

And that is offensive.

Hot dogs are supposed to be made of a disgusting slurry of animal products in a tube, not a disgusting slurry of plant stuff in a tube.

So other than the ban of Joey Chestnut, the other big piece of news in the eating community this year was the announcement by Kobayashi of his retirement from the sport.

Except

don't worry.

One more event.

Kobayashi and Chestnut

rode

and put together their own

unsanctioned head-to-head eat-off because major league eating go fuck itself.

The event was on September 2nd, live on Netflix, and it was called Chestnut versus Kobayashi Unfinished Beef.

Amazing.

Amazing.

Amazing.

The resolution was better than the Jake Paul Mike Pyson fight.

Otherwise, you might as well play Pac-Man.

Unfinished beef.

So good.

That's why you chose the episode.

I know it.

I love it.

That's it.

So.

The big showdown starts with a pregame show on Netflix, and we learn about the latest training regimen for the the two athletes.

Chestnut is still doing most of the same stuff we learned about already, but Kobayashi is a couple new ones.

First, we see his tongue stretching routine.

He does long tongue stretches and also like a gecko, yeah, like that.

Yeah, he goes out with it, I would imagine.

He stretches it, but he also does speed yoga with a series of quick flicking motions with his tongue.

You guys doing it?

His other new technique, to strengthen his inhalation power, he sucks on empty plastic bottles until they crumple to get extra power.

Really seems like Kobayashi is planning a second career behind a different kind of paywall after this contest.

Yeah, his competitive dessert eating is on OnlyFlats.

So from there, we get the official rules of the Netflix contest.

They use the same basic format as the 10-minute Nathan's contest, but with one notable variation.

The Solomon technique and clearing were banned.

No separating the hot dogs from the buns and no dunking allowed.

Despite being the innovator of those moves, Kobayashi actually does prefer the new rules now.

Oh, he does.

He does actually prefer to eat fucking hot dog buns dipped in warm water.

Yeah, I think he just likes the random buns.

He likes that he doesn't have to do that to be doing the best strategy.

Yeah, love that someone at Netflix was like, hey, do you guys want to do it not gross?

And they were like, yes, we do.

We've been waiting for somebody to ask that.

Oh, my God.

Right.

So they finished the montage of the training regimen.

And then we get a fun fact from the play-by-play announcer for Netflix.

That would be Tim Janice, a retired pro in the eating community.

He explains that Chestnut has the advantage in terms of total stomach capacity, but Kobayashi has a condition called gastratosis or low stomach.

And that means his stomach can expand below the rib cage, which makes up for some of the size disparity.

Takiro Kobayashi putting the pro in pro laps.

He's the best.

He's my favorite athlete.

So the competitors take their places on stage and they get 30 seconds to check their stations.

Water cup placement is key because they want to be able to grab it.

just you know efficiently and once they're all set eating begins during the first minute they both set a personal record for the fastest start, 14 for Chestnut and 12 for Kobayashi.

And surprisingly, they're both ahead of their standard pace from other contests where dunking is allowed.

The running tally, it stays neck and neck for a while.

But in the end, Joey Chestnut appears to pull ahead.

But the scores are not official yet.

After the clock runs out, The judges have to sweep up all the crumbs on the floor of each station into a dustpad and weigh them up as a potential device.

Oh, I thought they were going to have to eat.

The judges also

squeegee the bottom of the competitors' shoes in case they were hiding any scraps.

And according to Tim Janice, there have been scandals about the bottom of the shoes in the past.

Scandal scandals.

Yeah.

When Bubba Dupree showed up in his so-called Nike Dysons, yeah, he said they were limited edition, but.

Well, after the contest, they change into their Reebok pump my stomachs.

So the judges figure it all out.

And in the end, Kobayashi's final score is 66

HDB in 10 minutes.

But it's not enough.

Joey Chestnut wins with a new world record of 83 HD.

Look at 10 minutes.

No dunking, no separating.

And the special ends with WWE legend Rey Mysterio presenting the hot dog eating championship belt, beef squashed.

And if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, Heath, what would it be?

So the presenter of a hot dog belt has approximately the same resume as our next Secretary of Education.

God damn it.

Are you ready for the quiz?

Yeah, right?

Yeah, I guess.

I love the idea of Rey Mysterio presenting like a WWE style belt covered in vomit to these guys.

So, Keith, what would be like a better WWE names for the competitors?

Which one would you choose, actually?

Let's go with that.

What one would you choose, Heath?

A

Disgorgeous George, B

CM Chunks,

C, Chundertaker, or D,

Stone Cold Heave Often.

Okay.

I was going to go with Puke Skywalker from the Yoda Mentor thing.

But Stone Cold Heave Often is way too good.

It's got to be good.

Yeah, it's definitely.

Oh, my God.

All right, Heath.

I spent a lot of my time and energy thinking about and working on ways to help save America.

Hey, that was a fucking waste of my time.

Hey, it's A.

Tom.

Yeah.

That is.

It sure was, buddy.

Yeah.

All right.

I have one for you.

Before Joey Chestnut, Kobiashi had one other memorable loss to a bear on a Fox program called Man versus Beast.

It's amazing.

Which was not even in your essay when I first got to it.

That is a factoid that you would have otherwise left out of your essay altogether.

Why would you do that?

A,

you are somehow unaware of this amazing moment in pop culture.

B, you didn't think the audience deserved that knowledge.

C,

you didn't want to mar the otherwise very serious subject that you are dealing with with such frivolities.

Or D,

you remember that that show also ended with 50 little people trying to pull an airplane faster than an elephant could, and you realized that that was the nadir of American culture and a harbinger of Trump's America coming, thus robbing it of any humor potential.

Yeah,

it's a combination of C and D.

Like in terms of narrative structure, I wanted to focus on the rivalry of Cobell Chestnut.

But yeah, the bear thing was pretty great, but I think it's, yeah, combo C and D.

That is correct.

Nice CND.

All right, Heath.

I quit the show.

Why?

Hey, the sentence, but he ate his own vomit, so it didn't count, will ring in my ears for the next 10,000 years.

Yeah, okay, yeah, you don't need more.

It's a

mine too, buddy.

Yeah, so I think Eli wins for expressing how we all

welcome

for our special episode 400.

Sometimes it still tastes good if it's like right after

Hey, do that line again.

Yep.

Sometimes it actually does taste bad because no, no, no, no, not you, not you.

Another person.

It's good with cheese.

Definitely a different person should say a lot.

Cheese or ice cream and dairy is usually the best topic.

You're shit going to throw up it before this is over.

This is my most episode.

I want to know an essay.

We've got a very special episode 400 coming up.

I want a Noah essay.

All right, well, forget Cecil, Tom, and Eli.

I'm Noah.

Thank you for hanging out with us today.

We're going to be back next week.

And by then, Eli will be an expert on something else, assuming nobody's too grossed out by this week's episode to ever come back.

And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com/slash citationpod or leave us a five-star review everywhere you can.

And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media, or check the show notes.

Be sure to check out citationpod.com.

Okay, please just give me one more spin.

Fine, fine.

Hublotta more.

Why are so many H-words bad things?

What is happening?

I think it might just be words.

Yeah,

probably just words.

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