 Glenn Jacobs, also known as WWE superstar Kane, is our guest this week. He's not only a tremendous performer and athlete, but also a tremendous intellectual, a voracious reader, a dedicated Rothbardian, and a great friend of the Mises Institute. Glenn explains his journey to libertarianism and Austrian economics, how he approaches the business end of professional wrestling, and how Kane stays fit for his most demanding role. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back once again to Mises Weekends. I'm your host, Jeff Deist. And as mentioned in the introduction, we're very pleased to be joined today by none other than Glenn Jacobs. So, Glenn, how are you this weekend? Doing great, Jeff. How are you? Well, I couldn't be better. And it's interesting, reading some of your biographical background, I've noticed that it looks like you don't have an official bio that you've written or a book that's in bookstores for us. But just Wikipedia is a font of knowledge. And apparently, Glenn, you grew up in an Air Force family. So I'd be interested in knowing your background. Were your parents particularly ideological or political? And what sort of influence did they have on you? Sure. My dad actually retired from the Air Force when I was four years old. So I didn't necessarily grow up in an Air Force family, per se. My brother and sister, who are older than I am, did. They went to like, gosh, like eight or 10 different elementary schools or something like that. But, you know, it's interesting because my parents, I don't know if they were particularly ideological, but I do remember one of my earliest memories is being in the car with my parents and we were driving somewhere, of course, and looking up at the power lines that had been, you know, the high tension power lines, the high voltage lines. And they were cut right across someone's field. And I remember my parents talking about how terrible in the domain was, you know. So that was one of my earliest memories. And my folks were sort of, I guess, like old school conservatives that they didn't really trust big government, you know, they weren't libertarian, per se. But certainly they were sort of of that sort of, I guess, goldwaterish conservatism. So Glenn, according to your wiki, it looks like you played basketball in high school and then football in college, where you were an English major. Now, I'm just interested, were you recruited as an athlete to college and did you have any inkling then that you could one day make a living as a professional athlete? Well, as a kid, that's sort of what I wanted to do, of course. Yeah, I was recruited. Unfortunately, I played basketball in high school, I did not play football. And unfortunately, I injured myself pretty severely in my senior year of basketball. I broke my ankle and I was out for about half the season. So I ended up going to a small school, Quincy College, which is now Quincy University. And I played basketball there and then I ended up transferring to Northeast Missouri State University, which is now Truman State University. And it's in Kirksville, Missouri, close to the Iowa border. I didn't lift weights in high school playing basketball because that was still back in the time when there was this thought that you'd get muscle bound and wouldn't be able to move that well, which of course is complete bunk. But in any case, I started lifting weights between my senior year in high school, my freshman year in college, and I ended up putting on like 30 pounds. And I graduated high school and I weighed like 225 or 230 pounds. By the time I graduated from college, I was well over 300 pounds. And if I'm running up and down the basketball court at like 280 pounds and just what am I doing? And the football coach talked to me like, well, let's go play football. And I did. And because of the skills from basketball, I was a good athlete, you know, for especially for that size. And I ended up getting some interest from the NFL. Unfortunately, again, I had a very bad injury to my left knee in my senior year of playing football, and that sort of ended my football career. And at that point, I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew that I didn't really want to get a real job. So I started with a local group with wrestling and it's a lot of fun because the wrestling combines the athleticism, but also with theatrics, of course. And it was it was just a blast. And I guess the rest of history. Since you raised the topic of some of your training, do you do traditional weight lifting regimes like squats and deadlifts? Do you do body weight exercises? Do you have a particular diet that you follow? Can you just tell us a little bit about how you stay fit for your character? Sure. My diet would probably be considered a paleo diet. I what I do is five or six days a week. I keep my protein and fats high and my carbohydrates as low as possible. And then one day a week, I just eat sort of a conventional diet. As far as my weight training goes, yeah, I do more conventional weight training, you know, with the squats and the deadlifts and bench press. I don't do as many free weights as I used to because I'm just getting older and I don't go on to take a chance of injury. So I do more stuff on machines now. I have not participated in the CrossFit craze. I think that'd be really good, but I just haven't talked myself into it yet. So at this point, I still do a conventional workout, but I work out five, six days a week. I'm of the mind that as long as you're getting in there and doing something, you know, you're making progress, at least maintaining what you have. I'd like to ask you a little bit about just the sheer physicality of Professor Essling. I think people understand the strength and the physique elements, but I'd noticed we're roughly the same age. I wonder how you maintain the mobility and flexibility for such a demanding job. I think a lot of that actually still has to do with the weight training. As I mentioned earlier, back in 20 years ago, 30 years ago, people thought that you'd become muscle-bound by lifting weight. That's the exact opposite. You actually keep your flexibility because if you train weights through your full range of motion, it strengthens that entire range of motion for the muscles and the ligaments as well in attendance. So I actually attribute a lot of that to weight training. I don't stretch nearly as much as I should. That's sort of a goal of mine to start doing that more in the future. But the future is only the day away, it seems like. But I would attribute that part of it to the weight training again. What we do is pretty physically demanding. It's not like we just go out there and dance around. I mean, we're hitting each other pretty hard and running across the ring and all that sort of stuff, and it is. And I do have to stay in good shape, especially for my style, you know, because even though I'm a bigger guy, I still try to maintain a high level of athleticism in the ring. And I've been doing that for quite a while. So yeah, it's very important for me to stay in the best shape that I possibly can. Well, shifting gears slightly here to your intellectual development. You know, you spoke a couple of years back, Glenn, on Fox Business, about your journey to liberty. And in that interview, you mentioned the work of Murray Rothbard having a particular influence on you. So I was hoping you might elaborate a little bit for us. How do you become particularly interested in Austrian economics and find out about the Mises Institute? I'd always been interested in politics, unfortunately. Even through high school and then beyond. But I never felt like I aligned with, quote, unquote, either side of the political spectrum in either the left or the right, because I agreed with the left on some things. We disagreed with someone other things and vice versa with the right same thing. And eventually a friend of mine, actually a fellow wrestler, mentioned the term libertarian, so you sound like a libertarian. And I always joke. I was like, man, you don't need to call my names. OK, we don't want to get into a fight here, right? Because I had no idea what the term libertarian meant. So I did some research and I found the libertarian party and that's actually was my first exposure to libertarianism. And I'm one of those people, once I get interested in something, I have to learn like everything about it. And then it was the same way with my philosophical development. You know, as I went from the libertarian party being my portal to liberty, my portal to this entire world on the other side. And then, of course, I came upon the works of backup for a second. Excuse me. I guess I followed through the path or the path a lot of people take, you know, started with I don't even remember, you know, who, but as I delve deep down the rabbit hole, I got to the more and more radical works. And then I got to my Rothbard and there's the old saying you just can't argue with him because all of his arguments are bulletproof. I mean, every objection that you bring up, Rothbard pretty much destroys. And for me, that was it. I was like, yeah, this is this guy knows what he's talking about. And really for me, too, once I began to understand the action of nonaggression and the fact that the idea of self ownership and that sort of thing, once I got that philosophical grounding because I'm what I would call an ad hoc libertarian. I mean, I would look at the issues and say, yeah, I think the libertarians are out at this, I think they're out about that. I don't know about this because if I agree with some of that. But once you get to that philosophical grounding of it's all based on our interpersonal relationships and as people, we don't have the right to impose our will upon other people through violence. We'll need it as a state, need it as the government. Once you reach that particular conclusion, it's like the misclear is up. And you're like, oh, I understand now. And even some of the things that I may disagree with personally, I can't say that people should or should not do those things because of their choice. And as long as they're not hurting anybody else with those choices, it's really up to them. And once I came to that conclusion, like I said, it was it was just all over with and just a long way. Some of the people that I really began to respect. Started, I started seeing this term Austrian economics and so on from Ron Paul and of course from Rothbard. I did not, I was not introduced to Rothbard through Austrian economics. That's the vice versa. I started reading Rothbard for his political philosophy. Then that's when I got interested in Austrian economics. And again, it was the same thing. Now, once you start reading about Austrian economics and you understand that economics is not about numbers, but it's about people. It's not human action. Everything becomes clear to you. I never took a course in economics in college because I'm not really interested in math. My sister's a mathematician. She actually is a rocket scientist who works for NASA for a while. But she inherited that gene. I did not. So I had absolutely no interest in economics until I discovered Austrian economics. I was like, Oh, OK. So what we're talking about here is, duh, it's about people. And again, you know, it was all over at that point. And I just dealt in as deep as I possibly could. It's interesting. You're not just a dill atant, though. I mean, from what I've seen, this is a serious interest for you. And I must imagine that you spent a lot of long hours on the road reading on your own time. But I've seen videos of you giving lengthy, elaborate talks on Austrian economics and expositions of the Fed and so forth. This is really, really seems like a passion for you. Well, it is. I think the one thing and I think a lot of folks who's in this podcast would agree with me, the one thing that we could do that would have a profound impact upon our country and, of course, the world would be to expose the Fed for what it is. It is a cartel, you know, and to push for market money, whether that's, you know, a government gold standard, which is OK. But, you know, optimally, the actual free market determining what money is that would be the most important thing politically that could be done. You know, I tell people all the time, taxation doesn't really matter that much because if the federal government is just able to print money willy-nilly like it is, it doesn't matter. They're always going to they're always going to have that at their their disposal. And as the Austrian economy, Austrian economy is a point out, you know, it's not so much taxation. Taxation is a problem, but the real problem of the spending and all the interventions and the spending that the government does and how that distorts the market, that becomes a big problem, too. So that really has become a passion of mine because I do believe that the Fed is the root of all evil in our country and in our world today. You mentioned Ron Paul. At some point, you became involved in the 2008 Ron Paul Revolution. Now, did he reach out to you or did you reach out to him or tell us about your relationship with Ron? Actually, neither of us reached out to each other. We just we just sort of found each other. I was a supporter and some of the stuff, I guess, that I was saying got on the Internet. And of course, I know some people that know Dr. Paul and introduced me to them and things just went from there. But, you know, that was, again, a product of the Internet. And, you know, the Internet's probably the greatest thing that's happened to Liberty ever, because I wouldn't be where I am philosophically if it wasn't for the Internet, because I would have just never known, you know, and the resources that are available on the Internet from places like the Mises Institute just would have been available to me. So that's just, you know, it's just a wonderful, wonderful thing is the Internet, you know, and it's brought me to become friends with so many people from around the world, really, who are philosophically aligned with me. Before the Ron Paul Revolution, I lived in East Tennessee and I was pretty sure that I was the only libertarian within a couple hundred mile radius. And all of a sudden I found out that there's a lot more of this than I think we all realized. And it's just wonderful and great. And, you know, not only have I been able to meet folks that I respect on a political and philosophical level, but also people have become very good friends of mine. Glenn, wrestling fans are generally viewed as coming from red states. Their NASCAR fans are solid of the earth types. And they're often viewed perhaps dismissively by the political class. So when you travel in the United States to do your shows, do you have a sense of optimism for the Liberty movement here? Are people looking for something outside the two party box? Yes, the problem is that people are so busy working and trying to provide for the families and just trying to get ahead in this horrible paradigm that's been built that folks are busy and they just don't have time. And they don't realize the options that are available to them. You know, and of course, this public education system being at the mercy of the state, the state having a monopoly on that. It's very hard for folks to break those paradigms. I'm a big fan of Richard Mayberry, who writes the early warning report. And maybe there is the first person that I read to talk about models, you know, models or these paradigms that we create in our mind of how the world works. And unfortunately, so many people have had the status paradigm indoctrinated into them, just beaten to their heads that it's very hard for them to look at Liberty and realize that it's not only viable option, but it's the best option. But nevertheless, people, people are disgusted. You know, they're repulsed. I think the reason that a lot of people aren't more active is because as Mayberry says, you know, when they look at Washington, D.C., they see a cesspool and decent people don't become involved with tax for the thing. So, you know, I am optimistic because, you know, the market is simply remarkable. I was one of those folks in 2008, I was like, oh, man, this is probably the whole thing is going to fall apart. But we survived. And the reason we survived is because the free market is so resilient. And despite the fact that they have all these interventions and all these horrible things that happen, nevertheless, people find a way to overcome the obstacles that the state puts in the way. So in that regard, yes, I am optimistic. And I do think the people are looking for an alternative. I don't think that many of them have really been exposed to the Liberty alternatives at this point, maybe a little bit, but not as much as they should have. And it's our job in the future, of course, with folks like you and the Mesa Institute to do the work that needs to be done in that regard with education. Well, you've talked about how many of your colleagues in professional wrestling are actually highly intelligent. They're business people like yourself. Have you made any converts to Liberty amongst your colleagues, other wrestlers? Yeah, I've had a few, actually. What's interesting about us is we're independent contractors, which means that the company does not pay our taxes. So all of the guys have to file quarterly returns and have to write a check to the internal revenue service. And nothing will bring your religion faster than writing a check to the IRS. So that's always a good time for me to talk to people is when those checks go out, you know, and of course, a couple of the guys have had run-ins. They thought that they did everything right and found out that the rules changed. And that sort of thing. So, yeah, I have been able to convert a few guys. Well, one last question as we let you go. You mentioned that professional wrestlers are independent contractors. So in that sense, they're akin to PGA tour players and their relationship with the PGA tour. I just wonder, you know, you're a business owner. You've got a brand to worry about. You have estimated tax payments. You presumably have agents, promoters, contracts, endorsements. And then apparently on top of all this, you have a wife, you have some children, you have an insurance business. Does it ever become overwhelming to keep the brand that the business known as Cain together? Yeah, that is actually I never seem to have enough time. Luckily, my wife is really good at helping me with, you know, stuff, especially like with the insurance agency. But nevertheless, yeah, it does it does get overwhelming at times. I would sort of like to spend more time at home on generally gone four to five days a week. And that's that's the hardest part of what I do is the travel. You know, when people say that wrestling is hard on your body. Well, I don't find it hard on my body. Actually, I do the travel. And of course, the mental aspect of it. So, yeah, sometimes it's overwhelming. But nevertheless, I've been very fortunate to have the opportunities that I've had. And I'm very thankful for that. So I wouldn't trade it for anything. Glenn Jacobs, thank you so much for your time this weekend. And also thank you for being a great friend to the Mises Institute. Ladies and gentlemen, have a great weekend.