Friends, I'm starting to believe that professional wrestling might be a kind of decoder

ring that can be used to understand the central theme of all 185 episodes of this podcast.

Am I overstating things almost certainly?

And if I've learned anything from wrestling, it's that you should never simply state something

when you can overstate it.

This podcast has been, among other things, a bi-weekly exploration of the concepts of truth

and lies, reality and fiction, history and mythology.

We've looked at how robust storytelling traditions can grow out of small kernels of

historical fact.

We've broken down how completely fictional tales have lodged themselves in our shared

historical consciousness, masquerading as historical facts.

We've explored the life stories of some of humanity's greatest liars, cheats and conmen.

In all of that, I've found myself circling back to the concept of lying.

That is consciously insisting on a version of reality that is contrary to the observable

facts.

Eight years of producing our fake history has given me a healthy respect for the power

of lies, but professional wrestling really lays it there.

Professional wrestling embodies the unique power of the lie.

It's a small piece of remarkably potent dark magic that even a child can perform.

Pro wrestlers kept people guessing about the legitimacy of their brand of theater for

decades, despite countless exposés and exceedingly flamboyant matches.

From basically the mid-30s onward, the answer to whether or not wrestling was fake was

...