April 19, 2025 • 42 mins
Join Josh and Chuck in this classic episode as they go down the sport shoe rabbit hole, detailing the strange tail of the brothers who brought Puma and Adidas to the world. Sibling rivalry, Nazis, shoes - there's a lot to unpack here.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey friends, it's me Josh, and for this week's select
I've chosen our twenty eighteen episode on Adidas Versus Puma.
It's the German version of the Hatfield Versus the McCoys,
except with cool sports apparel rather than overalls. And one
of the things I noticed at the end of this
episode is that sometimes when we're just doing our thing,
talking back and forth like we do, we'll have some
(00:22):
throwaway comment or side conversation or something that takes on
much greater significance years on. It's one of the interesting
things about talking out loud for seventeen years at any rate.
Sarrak Vodka, anyone.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles w Chuck Bryant, There's Andrew over there, the guest producer.
I'm wearing Adidas, Chuck is wearing Puma, and Andrew's wearing Reebok.
None of us are speaking to one another right now.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, it's weird. Andrew was wearing white Rebock high tops
with bronze pantyhose and orange Dolphin running shorts. Well any
claims he doesn't work for Hooters part time.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Oh oh oh, yes, I like that.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
You didn't know that because that means you don't go
into Hooters.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
No, No, I've seen pictures on TV.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
I had to go. Actually, I've only been there once
and that was when I worked at that awful job
with the Chicken Killers, and it was on a stupid
work trip. They made me go on and that was
like the only place in town. Yep, And all these
yocals that I worked with were like, yeah, man, let's
go to Hooters. And I went in there and I
was just like, oh my lord, what is they were
(01:47):
trapped in time.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I've been there a couple of times actually, when I
was a younger, younger. Man.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
It's the same, I imagine it is.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
I'm sure. And I was there on my twenty first
birthday in Jacksonville because it was the only place. It
was like a Tuesday night or something, and I was like,
this is this is not the best twenty first birthday
all ever have.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, and hey, we don't want to yuck your yum.
If you're if you work at Hooters or if you
love going there, more power to you. Sure, sure, why not? Right?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
That's pretty awesome that you said you don't want to
yuck anyone's yum.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Yeah, it's funny. I was thinking about a couple of
weeks ago when, uh, it was like the Costanza moment
when you thought of a line after the moment. Yeah,
when you were talking about how I was crazy for
not liking olives and I got on to you, I
should have said, don't yum my yuck.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Right, or I was just funny you said that. Because
I was thinking about that later on too, I thought
that I should have said, well, actually, I'm not yucking
your yum. I'm yucking your yuck, which is different. H
you know, think about it, man, are you thinking about it?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I think it's weird that we both thought about that
moment afterward. I think so too, because usually we just
go back into our hyperbolic chambers and float for the
next six days.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
It's pretty great life. We have pretty nice just soaking
in our own urine. God, don't you pee in your
hyperbaric chamber?
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Well yeah, but I mean that's how you're supposed to
fill it up, right.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Right, So chuck. Obviously, what we're talking about today is
athletic gear, sports shoes in particular, and two of the
most well known sports brands in the entire world, Adidas
and Puma. And some people might not know this, chuck,
(03:38):
but Adidas and Puma were founded by two brothers who
spent many decades of their lives not speaking to one another.
And some people might even know that that they are
rival brands founded by rival brothers, but I guarantee they
don't know the full story behind one of the most
bitter family rivalries of all time that gave us Adidas
(04:00):
and Puma. And it is extraordinarily fascinating. There's there's Nazis,
there's Run DMC, there's all this stuff all rolled into
one and it turns out that this is it's one
of the better stories I've ever come across.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
That's right. And before we dive into that awesome story,
to head off emails, I know, I said hyperbolic inside
of Hepperbarrick. No such thing as a hyperbolic chamber.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
I know it could be it's a shamber that it's like,
I'm the biggest shamer.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Ever probably so. All right, So this is a great story,
and I had heard bits and pieces of this over
the years, But it is interesting that Nazis and Run
DMC and feuding brothers all come together to cause you
know my Pumas. I've been a Puma guy, sure for many,
(04:49):
many years, even though I did have a pair of
Adidas Superstars at one point, but they're two.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Flashy.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
No, I liked them, but they were you know, white
shoes aren't good on me. I get get them too dirty,
too quick.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
So now I just vary my Pumas between the black
and the black suede and sort of like the olive
green swade.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Usually. You know, Adidas makes non white shoes you could try.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah, but those classic white Superstars with the three blue stripes,
Oh yeah, those are the ones.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
The shelters. Yeah, well, I mean they have some other
cool ones too, like Gazelle's are pretty cool, like the
flat bottomed soccer shoe.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
And yeah, my brother was in du i worred Gazell's
for a while when I was a soccer poser. But
my brother was into Stan Smiths.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Oh yeah, those are cool too. I've got some stand Smiths.
They are like this blue mesh. And now that I
think about it, if I have a loyalty to either one,
it would be Adidas. But I don't. I don't consider
myself like Adidas loyal.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Well, I'm a Puma guy just because they look good
on me in their comfy But I was also a
low top Converse All Star guy for a while. And
in high school. Of course, in the preppy days, I
was all about the tree torns.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
I never had tree torns.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
It was a look.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Oh, I know for sure I was comfy. I was
right after tree torns when I started to get into
shoes case wiss we're in.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, I never had any of those.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Those are cool.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
And then what was the other shoe? The Vans. There's
a particular style of vans that I really still enjoy.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
The slip on ones with the black and white checks.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
No, those are cool, but I don't know if I
can pull those off at forty seven.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
You could, but people will laugh at you behind your back.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
That's already happening. Yeah, I'll remember at some point.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Okay, well, just shout it out.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
And plus, I just wanted to cover our basis by
saying as many name brands as possible.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Don't forget British Nights, not the b KS yep, So chuck, Yes,
let's start the story. Shall We were gonna have to
get in the way back machine for this.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
One, okay, and this is also full of urine.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
So that was you though. Let's let everybody know. We're
going to go back to the end of World War
One in Germany and we're going to go to a
little town that I'm going to let you pronounce because
I've been trying and I cannot do it.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
And I thought it was interesting that we're recording this
now because we just acknowledged and recognized the one hundred
years removed from.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
World War One, the end of World War One, Yeah,
and the beginning of the Spanish flu that killed like
three times as many people right after it.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah, that's another celebration.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Right, So we're going back there, We're just going back
one hundred days almost to the day.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah. And so the name of that town is Hertzo Generach.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Well I could have done at least that good.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah, Hertzel Generach.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
It's not exactly said that like that. Here, let's play
this Helzel Oh that's how it said. Okay, okay, so
maybe we should just have that voice say it for us,
but we're not going to it. Turns out the locals
just called the town Hurtzo. Sure, that's all we'll call it,
but it's a little tiny village in Bavaria.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
They can't even pronounce it.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
No, They're like, we're not even going to try. And
we were born here. Don't be too hard on yourself, Josh,
is what they're saying. So in Hertzo, it's a little
town in Bavaria, a little village. There's a river running
through it.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yes. And in around nineteen eighteen, one of the villagers
who was born there, a guy named Adolph Dassler, takes
a seat in his mother's laundry. His mother ran a
laundry out of their house, and he starts cobbling athletic shoes,
specifically track shoes, I think, to begin with, and he
(08:51):
had a knack for it. He started making shoes that
athletes actually wanted pretty early on, pretty much out of
the gate, and he started doing so well so quickly
that within a year or two he asked his older brother,
who is by far the more outgoing extrovert sales many
type of the of the two brothers, his older brother Rudolph,
(09:14):
to start selling his shoes, start kind of creating a
business operation out of it. And I think within just
a few years they had twelve employees, and they founded
a company called Sports Farbrick Gabruder Dostler, which they call
Getta for short.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah, so Gabruda is, you know, for Brothers. So Gabruda
Dossler is the Dossler Brothers ship company. And people were like, wow,
so I don't have to wear my high heeled leather
sport boot any longer, I bitch.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
I don't have to tie some sharp rocks to the
bottom on my feet.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
So their nicknames you'll probably here is referred to them
as Addi and Rudy are ud I and you'll know,
if you kind of put your head to it, you
can see where this is headed.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
This is exciting.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
So the laundry business wasn't going well, so like you said,
little Addi started making these shoes and things started going great.
And it turns out they made a pretty good team
at first because they complimented one another in what they
were and what they were good at. So Addi was
creative and he was the brains, and Rudyo was a
little more extroverted and he was a really good salesperson.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Right, So they start to do a pretty good, pretty
good business and it's if you're like, well, it's a
weird thing to start doing as a younger man, to
start making supports shoes. It turns out that Hurtzo is
like a shoemaking town. It has a long tradition of shoemaking.
In nineteen twenty two, for example, their population was thirty
(10:47):
five hundred, but they had one hundred and twelve shoemakers.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
That's a high shoemaker to regular population ratio. So it's
not the weirdest thing ever. But they're plotting along. They're
making really high quality shoes. Like right out of the gate,
Atti had a real, like I said, a talent for
making high quality athletic shoes. And one of the first
things they made were track shoe that one of these
(11:13):
articles says looks like a ballet slipper with some nails
coming out of the front of it, the front bottom
of the four soule, and it was it just changed everything.
It was a genuinely great track shoe. At the time,
the people who were running sprinters, who were running track,
they didn't have any traction when they were taking off.
(11:35):
This gave them traction and just gave them an immediate
leg up. Over the competition, and so the athletes like
really really liked the shoes that they were putting out,
and the companies started to grow and grow and grow,
and then I think the nineteen twenty eight Olympics in
Los Angeles is where they really debuted their shoes and
(11:56):
a German sprinter was wearing a pair of their track shoes.
He won was a bronze medal, but he won a
bronze medal wearing the Dassler Brothers.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Shoes as a German sprinter exactly, so that should say
it all.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
It does.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
So he was wearing these track spikes and this helped him,
This got him a little bit of notoriety. But it
was really in nineteen thirty six in Berlin at that
very very famous Olympic Games, where a young athlete named
Jesse Owens dominated and literally tore up the track wearing
(12:30):
those Gibruda Dossler track spikes with Hitler in the stands,
and people are like, those shoes are amazing, and Jesse
Owens was like, it's kind of me, but yeah, sure
the shoes are great, but I'm also a vastly superior
athlete to the rest of these jumps out here.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah, So that was the Olympics that Jesse Owens famously
finished in first place, won the gold and did another
lap around the track, went up into the stands and
slapped Hitler right in the face.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Oh Man slapt his little stash right off that lip.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
So the fact that Jesse Owens was wearing these shoes
immediately brought international attention to get the Gebruder Dossler company.
So they I saw one article that said, had World
War Two not happened, this business would have just gone
global immediately, and it started to. But then when World
(13:26):
War two broke out, and that was the nineteen thirty
six Olympics, I think I said the nineteen twenty eight Olympics.
It was I think the nineteen thirty two Olympics that
I talked about first. But at the nineteen thirty six Olympics,
within just a couple of years, the Nazis invaded Poland
and were running Germany, and World War Two kicked off
in earnest and the time for sports apparel kind of
(13:51):
got derailed a little bit.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Yeah. So, just like in the United States and actually
in countries all over the world, the war effort was
It's not like they were just like, all right, we
have a few companies that manufacture military needs for our military,
and that's going to be good enough. It's like, no,
we need to really co opt kind of any manufacturing
(14:14):
that we want to to go toward the war effort.
And certainly Germany did that along with the US and
kind of everyone else and everything from Hugo Boss to
Lufthansa to these little cheemakers in the small town in Bavaria.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah, their factories were co opted for the war effort basically,
and what the Dossler Brothers factory ended up making are
something called the ponzer Shrek, which means the tank Terror
and it was modeled after the American Bazukah, which was
one of the first shoulder mounted, recoil less rocket launchers
(14:55):
that had enough power to punch right through a tank
and blow up everybody inside. They were nasty little buggers.
And the ponzer Shrek was the German version of the Bazuka.
And the German version of the Bazuka was created in
the Dossler Brothers shoe factory.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yeah, it's December nineteen forty three is when they kind
of made the full switch in these little you know,
German ladies who were sewing shoes the week before were
now manufacturing German bozukahs. The good news is by this time,
because these things were really effective actually, and had they been,
(15:36):
had they been brought into the war sooner, things might
have really changed. But thankfully, by this time, even though
they were doing the job, it was too late. The
tides had turned and the Allies were steaming toward victory,
and even though they started pumping out these bazukahs, it
was sort of too little, too late.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah. Have you ever wondered about the name bazuka?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Not until just now?
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Okay, Well I did, and I was like, what does
a bazuka mean? Apparently there was a an entertainer, I
think he might have been vaudeville, kind of a country act,
and he Joe. I can't remember his name, it doesn't matter.
He created a musical instrument out of brass called a
bazuka and it was kind of like a trumpet a
(16:20):
trombone together. It was a weird little instrument, but he
was popular enough that and the bazuka looked like his
instrument enough that it became called the bazukah. This shoulder
mounted rocket launcher.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Interesting, I thought so too, Sure, why not?
Speaker 1 (16:35):
But the point is is that all of a sudden,
the Germans, who had been totally helpless against the American
tank divisions, were messing the American tank divisions up. And
the source of their their power was the Dossler Brothers
shoe factory. And you mentioned there are seamstresses welding bazukas together. Yeah,
(16:55):
they're also in their factory. There was forced labor of
French pow.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
You sure.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
So they had slaves and seamstresses working together to create
bazookas to take out the American tank divisions or the
Allied tank divisions thanks to the companies that would eventually
become Adidas and Puma.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
All right, that's a great setup. That's thank you. That's
only part one into what is a very interesting story.
So we're gonna take a little break and we'll come
back and talk about what went wrong with these two
brothers right after this as why why s k as.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
You should definitely should know our childhood each s k.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
All Right, So we're gotta we gotta go back in
time a little bit, because we we sped right up
to World War Two.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
It was just too interesting to wait to talk about
any longer.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
But we need to go back to about nineteen thirty
three because these brothers ended up fracturing in a big,
big way. And there have been, you know, some legendary
sibling rivalries through the years, but this is really one
of the greats. And I believe even Rudy wrote as
an older man, the relation to my brother was ideal
(18:21):
from nineteen twenty four to nineteen thirty three. Then his
young wife tried to interfere with business Mattis, although she
with us sixteen years had no experience at all, and
the warfare agan. So here's how the story goes, is it.
In nineteen thirty three, Otti was indeed married to a
sixteen year old, which seems very creepy now, but back
(18:44):
then it was not the strangest thing in the world.
Slightly less creepy, slightly less creepy. Well, they just it
was a different time, Okay. So he was married to
a sixteen year old and tried to get involved in
the business. Rudy was not happy about this, and they
all lived together. The two brothers and their wives all
lived together in the same townhouse. Yeah, which is not
(19:06):
a great recipe. For success anyway, right, you know, you
need to have your own place.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
So you can imagine that all the little bickering and
snide remarks and just all the stuff that if you
have two couples that don't really really really like and
love each other living together will will accumulate. If you
translate that to a business relationship, it's going to be
hard on the business than it was, for sure. So
(19:32):
there was apparently a series of just little things like that.
But as far as the family legend goes, the real
break happened during World War Two when the Allies were
bombing the village of Herzo and the Rudy and his
wife made it made their way to the bunker, the
(19:54):
bomb shelter, and shortly after that, Audi and his wife,
I think her name is Kata, they made their way
into the bomb shelter and when they entered, he said, oh,
it looks like the bastards are here again. And Oddi
apparently went to his grave saying that he was referring
to the Allied bombers, but Rudy took it that Oddie
(20:14):
was talking about Rudy and his wife, and apparently that
was the final straw.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Yeah, this was true evidence that things were really bad,
if something as simple, possibly as just a little misunderstanding
of whether or not the bastards were the Allied's bombing
or you my brother and my sister in law. Right,
So I mean things are pretty bad if this is
what did it.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Right. So that's World War two still going on, and
at some point Rudy gets called to go fight for
the Nazis. He gets drafted, so Rudy has to go
to war, and the whole time he's away, he's he's
so this rift has already happened, So he's suspecting one
that his brother and his brother's wife plotted to get
(20:58):
him drafted, and he can't get that idea out of
his head so much so that apparently multiple times he
deserted his post to go home to make sure that
he wasn't being ousted from the business he'd built with
his brother. And then he gets arrested for desertion, and
he's sure that his little brother ratted him out for desertion,
which he may have, and so he's arrested. He's held
(21:21):
for a while, and as he's making his way back
after the war to Hurtze, he gets picked up by
the Allies for under suspicion of being a Gestopo agent.
He's sure again his little brother Addi who got him
this time landed in a pow camp that he stays
him for a little while, and it turns out he
(21:43):
was right. There is documentary evidence from an American officer
who took the accusation down. And apparently it was Addi
who went to the Americans and said, my brother is
a Gestapo agent. He may want to arrest him. This
is the level of stuff he's others are doing to
one another. And the rift just kept getting bigger and
(22:04):
bigger and bigger. There's one other thing we have to say,
because the wife, the younger wife, the sixteen year old Kata,
gets historically blamed for creating this rift. I think in
a lot of ways unfairly sure, she's also the one
who saved the family business single handedly.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah. So in April nineteen forty five, the Americans march
into Hurze. Those tanks pull up in front of that
factory and the soldiers, American soldiers are out there like
kind of going over what they should do. Should we
destroy this building or not.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
This is the place where the Ponzer shreks were made.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah. So Audi's wife Kata comes out and she basically
walks right up to these enemy soldiers and says, we
only want to make shoes. We only desire to make shoes.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
And they're like, why are you talking like Colonel Klink and.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
She said, okay, And that's basically like she convinced them
to spare the factory. They did so, and not only that,
the Air Force US Air Force set up operations there
at their air base and realized that they really like
these shoes.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Well, they found out that this was the company that
made Jesse Owen's famous track shoes.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Yeah, and so they went off the charts. They started
getting these huge orders for sports teams, American sports teams
because of this.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
So this is all going on. It's all starting while
Rudy's off in a pow camp because his brother ratted
him out, and the business all of a sudden is
starting to turn international. Like you said, people around the
world are taking notice of this thanks to the American
gis who were coming back with this Getta sports wear.
(23:51):
And when Rudy comes back, it's done. His brothers ratted
him out. There was the whole thing in the bomb shelter,
and the brothers split the company that they built together.
They split Gabbruder, Dessler and or Dostler and they go
off and found their own companies.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah, fifteen years after that bunker incident.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
So it was it took a long time to finally
boil over, right, and in between there was another war.
They were not good Nazis, we should point out kind of,
you know, they were members of the Nazi Party, and
Rudy did get drafted, but like he said, he deserted
his post a lot and they, you know, they really
did just want to sell shoes.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Right. He's like Dwight Shrewds uncle or grandfather who spent
a lot of the war in an Allied pow camp.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
That's right. So, like you said, they split up the company.
And we mentioned earlier that this river ran through the
center of town, and I said significant, and it is
significant because it literally divided the town and they set
up their business. It's not like one of them said,
well I'm going off to Berlin. Right, They just set
up camp on opposite sides of that river. ADDI Dossler said,
(25:05):
I will name my company Adi Das.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Actually, at first they named it Adas.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Well yeah, but everyone said that stinks.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Well, no, that was a different one. That one. There
was a children's footwear line already called Oddis, so he
added the eye and turned it into Adidas.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Yeah, Rudy went with Ruda, and everyone said that no
one's going to buy a shoes named Ruda, especially in
the United States, And he said, I don't understand, and
they said, don't worry about it. So somehow he got
Puma out of Ruda, right, which I don't get, but
it's a name that's stuck.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Yeah, and it works. Puma is definitely better than Ruda
for sure.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
So these two go off and form directly competing companies
that split from the same company that the brothers had
founded together, and Adidas and Puma started making pretty good
headway out of the gate. First, Rudy had the sales team,
had the marketing team, had the ability to move some product.
(26:09):
But Audi had the technical know how, the dedication to
making high quality footwear that athletes, like professional athletes, wanted
to wear, and so he could get his shoes onto
athletes who would wear them on the world stage. And
eventually his his I guess his tech won out over
(26:30):
his brothers, and from a very early stage on, Adidas
has always led Puma, at least as far as like
sales revenue goes.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, and you know, there were mistakes from both of
them along the way business wise. One of the big
ones for Puma early on was that Rudolph got into
a spat with a coach of the German national soccer team,
and of course all that did was open the door
for his brother and Adidas to go in there and
(27:01):
say what about the shoes, which is exactly what happened.
And so at the nineteen fifty four World Cup, Germany
wears Adidas with those signature stripes, and even though they
were not favored at all West Germany actually won against
who Hungary I believe, and that was a huge, huge
deal on a national international stage.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
It was like the miracle on ice on grass.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
You mean, they were stoned.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
They were all stoned out of their gourds.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
The miracle on ice on grass. That might have legs,
My friend, I think need to trademark that.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Well, I do officially right now, trademarked.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
I love it. So that was one mistake. Adidas would
of course go on to make some mistakes later. I
know that you sent that one article where they talked
about how they said, you know at one point that
like yogging, no one's going to do that, So we're
not going to make yogging shoes and aerobics.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
That's that's a flash in the pan. Sure, who cares
about physical fitness.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
So you mentioned Reebok earlier. It's hard for the young
folk out there who are listening to know this, but
there was a time when Reebok was the name in
sports apparel.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Well plus all yeah, and in Reebok. This article says
that they lost their way at some point, but the
way that Reebok kind of took the lead for a
little while, I was saying, no, we'll get into jogging,
we'll get into aerobics, and we'll make this stuff at
a time when Adidas and Puma were ignoring it. One
of the other mistakes that both Adidas and Puma made
(28:38):
was that they were so focused on beating one another
man they just completely dropped the ball. As it were
on the rise of Nike Ya and Nike was able
to take over and apparently right out of the gate,
and since then, Nike's always been the leader in sports apparel.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Yeah, and Adidas is two and Pumas three. Right, yeah, amazing.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
So you have an option these days you can buy
your sports apparel from a company that's been known to
use child labor, or company that used forced French labor
under the auspices of the Nazi Party in World War Two. Hooray,
let's take a break.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, we'll take a break, and we'll talk about how
this rift still oddly carries over in that town today
and run DMC as why s K.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Definitely should know lar childs of each.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Y s K. All right, So back in the day
when they first split off this company and that river's
running through this town, it was a really big deal.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
It wasn't just a sibling rivalry. It became a town
wide rival and that you you worked for one company
or the other as a family like a husband and wife.
Didn't work, they didn't split up, and one worked at
Puma and one worked at Adidas.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
But plus, I mean, if you fell in love with
somebody from a family across the river like you, that
was sorry, Yeah you got a Romeo and Juliet thing
going on, that ain't gonna work. That crazy it is,
And I was glad that this one of the local
historians who was interviewed for one of these articles said
it wasn't like bloody or anything like sue lost their
lives over this. It was just, you know, if you
(30:33):
worked for Puma, you stayed on the Puma side of
the river. If you worked for Adidas, you stayed on
the Adida side of the river. And each each group
kept to themselves. That was all.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, And it still carries over to this day, some
of those recent interviews that we both read. I mean,
it's certainly now it's a little more good natured ribbing.
But they say, when you walk around this town, walk
through a playground and you see will you will see
kids kit it out in all Adidas or all Puma.
And this is carried down from generations where they were
(31:03):
Adidas or Puma families, and it was a really big
deal and still remains so to this day, such that
the mayor who actually came from a Puma family. Oh yeah,
but to be mayor, you can't, you know.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
You got to be a politician.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Sure, so he will wear to some events, casual events,
Puma gear and sometimes Adidas gear. Eventually, in two thousand
and nine, they had a friendly soccer match between the
official Puma sponsor team and Adidas team, and he wore
one Puma shoe and one Adidas shoe just to remain neutral,
I guess.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
And to look like a total jackass.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Probably so then it showed him rubbing like his pum
his Adidas foot. Later on they called him on camera.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
So this is like you said, there was a soccer
game that was played between Adidas and Puma, kind of
a reconciliation thing on International Peace Day back in I
think two thousand and nine. Yeah, that happened. Think about this.
The the Rudy and Addi Dossler died in the seventies,
within four years of each other. This was two thousand
(32:07):
and nine before the companies finally kind of had this
reconciliation game. And yeah, today still it's like you kind of, well,
you'll gently, you know, make fun of somebody wearing Adidas
if you're a Puma family or whatever. But while the
brothers were alive, you just steered clear of everybody who
was on the on the other side, so much so
(32:29):
that Herze was known as the town of the lowered gays,
because if you came upon somebody on the street, you
would look at their shoes to see what shoes they
were wearing before you decided whether you're going to talk
to them.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
That's so funny.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
It was that established this brother These brothers hatred and
rivalry of one another, and they didn't speak for decades,
spread out into the town that was divided by this river,
and the town itself took sides because of this rift
between these brothers that all started supposedly in this bomb
(33:02):
shelter during World War Two.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Yeah, and the mayor Hacker his first name is German.
Could that be right?
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Uh? Journalism on the German or the journalist is really
lazy and didn't They're just like, it's a he's a German,
We're just gonna call him that.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
I wonder if he pronounces that German that's what I
or Herreman because they don't say Germany over there anyway.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
But yeah, they say Deutsche Linn.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
But but would would it be Herrmann or no? I
guess they spell that Hermans with an H.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Yeah, I think it would be mayor German Hakka right, oh, yeah,
there is an h German Hackey Sokka who's on grass.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
But he says if someone someone comes in through the door.
To this day, your gay still wanders to their shoes.
It's just in the DNA of those people that this
athletic gear is so important. It's so strange. It's such
a cool, cool, weird story.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
It is a great story of sibling rivalry and bitterness
and hatred.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
And like you said, they didn't speak for decades. Apparently
much later in life, there were a couple of times
when they were a rumored to have spoken. Once. I
think they ran into each other at an airport. Once
they saw each other at a hotel. And I believe
on the deathbed which one tried to get in touch
(34:25):
with the other, Rudy. Rudy put out the call said
I would like to see my brother Adi one more time,
and Audi went, no, thanks, I'm good nine.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Can you believe it?
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Yeah, man, that's tough.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
So they died. The families sold the business in the
eighties late eighties, and they got bought by like corporate conglomerates. Sure, ironically,
Puma now owns Reeboch and Gucci owns Puma. Adidas is
still just Adidas, but again it's it's owned by like
(35:01):
a mega conglomerate, and they've they've just gone enormous and
make billions of dollars a year, so the families aren't
necessarily involved. But one family member still works in the business.
His name is Frank Dossler. I believe he was Rudy's grandson,
and he used to work at Puma. He was pretty
(35:22):
high up in Puma.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Now he works as the head of the legal department
for Adidas.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Man, So let's switch inside.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
It's a pretty good indication of how how much this
cold war is kind of thawed between the two companies
quite a bit because the people who are running it
have no skin in the game. They don't care anymore,
you know.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah. Or he's an attorney and he would just after
the most.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Money, right, He's like, let me suck your.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
So we have a fun little PostScript on this. I
know we've been talking about run DMC and again, you
Youngin's It might be second nature now to associate athletic
gear and hip hop and rap music and culture, but
back in the early nineteen eighties that was not the
case until run DMC came along.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
No, like your your rappers probably dressed like a Gone
and King, Yeah, or maybe.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Like the New York dolls, yeah, or just like I
mean sometimes I feel like I've seen just like denim
jackets and just sort of like just sort of streetwear,
which is the unhippous thing I've ever said.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
It was pretty unhipp I didn't want to say anything,
but I'm glad streetwear, so you know, play clothes. So
run DMC changed everything when they released a single called
My Adidas. Yeah, and I saw elsewhere that they released
a single My Adidas kind of in retaliation to song
(36:47):
a song called felon Shoes. So if you ever noticed
that run DMC wore their Adidas without laces with the
tongues popped out, I noticed that was supposedly because that's
how people in prison had to wear their shoes because
they weren't allowed to have shoelaces. And they were kind
of saying like, we're down with all of our buddies
in prison. Interesting, So this song fell in Shoes basically
(37:08):
was making fun of that and basically teaching kids not
to not to emulate prisoners, and run DMC took issue
with that, and they ended up releasing My Adidas the
song on Raisin Hell in nineteen eighty six. Sorry Raisin Hell, Yes,
which I remember. My family was on a bus to
Disney World once, I think, and the windows were foggy,
(37:29):
and I was so into run DMC. I just wrote
Raisin Hell in the fog on the window.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Dude.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
People on the bus thought that was really hilarious.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
That is a great story.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
So I was into my Adidas too because of Run DMC.
But it wasn't just me. Apparently, if you went to
a run DMC show on the Raisin Hell Tour or
the Together Forever tour in nineteen eighty six or eighty seven,
when they sang my Adidas, everybody would take off their
shoes and hold their Adidas in the air. Yeah, that's
how That's how big of an impact the song had.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Yeah. And in nineteen eighty six, a senior employee Adidas
named Angelo Anastasio went to that tour at Madison Square
Garden saw this happen with the Adida sneakers, and it
was like, hold on a minute, wait just a second,
we could have something here. Ran back to the headquarters
(38:21):
and within just a few days they signed them to
a million dollar endorsement deal, and that was like a
sea change forward for hip hop groups getting money in
all sorts of ways.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Yeah, and apparently it made Adidas's sales just go through
the roof.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
Oh yeah, yeah. And it's like that began the marriage
of like I'm going to put out a record, I'm
going to get a shoe deal, I might get a
vodka sponsor, like, oh yeah, I'll get money flowing in
from all kinds of directions and run DMC started it all.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
A Vodkas fonts or that's hilarious.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Sure, I feel like I've seen that.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
No, oh yeah, you know you totally have like P
Diddy and Sarrak vodka. I think, yeah, look it works.
I associate P Didty and Sarrak vodka.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Andrew's nodding, I means.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
You correct, awesome, Thanks Andrew.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Jerry would have been like, what, I'm my miso's getting cold, right,
can you guys hurry up?
Speaker 1 (39:17):
We will hurry up, Ghost of Jerry. If you want
to know anything else about Adidas and Puma, we'll just
go start reading up more. There's actually a book by
a woman named Barbara Schmitt called Sneaker Wars, appropriately all
about the rift between Adidas and Puma, So if you
want to know more about it, that's a pretty good
place to start. And since I said that it's time
(39:40):
for listener mayo.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Yeah, I'm gonna call this sponges. Okay, Hey, guys, I
was listening to Pando and I was excited y'all mentioned
glass sponges, which are thought to be the oldest animals
on Earth. I am a PhD student at the Scripts
Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, and I study marine
sponges because they make all sorts of unique molecules that
(40:04):
can be used as new medicines. I think sponges are
the coolest animals on Earth, and I'd love to share
some of my favorite sponge fun facts. You ready? Oh yeah.
Not only are sponges thought to be the oldest living,
single living animals on Earth, but some evolutionary biologists even
think sponges were the first animals to ever evolve. In
other words, our last common animal ancestor could very well
(40:28):
have been a sponge.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
That's so cool.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Did you know the first antiviral drug approved by the
FDA was developed from a molecule and a c sponge.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
I didn't until just now.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
As a PhD student, I collect and study sponges because
they are known to produce thousands of bioactive molecules, many
of which have medicinal potential. I think it's pretty incredible
that the ocean may hold the cure to some of
the most devastating human diseases, and I hope my work
might inspire people to protect the world's oceans and the
valuable resources within them.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Heck yeah, thanks for all the work you guys put
into the show. Y'all have kept me company on mini
long night in the lab with my sponges.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
That's awesome. It makes me want to go chew on
a sponge and see what happened.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
That's right. That's from Kayla Wilson from San Diego.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
Thanks a lot, Kayla, Thanks for the work you're doing too.
Thank you for saving humanity from grave diseases.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Yeah, we'll look into these sponges as you call them.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
If you want us to look into anything that we
put in scare quotes, well we want to know about it.
You can go onto our website stuff youshould Know dot com,
follow us on our social links. There you can get
in touch with us. You can also send us a
good old fashioned email, wrap it up, spank that thing
on the bottom and send it off to Stuff podcast
at HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey friends, it's me Josh, and for this week's select
I've chosen our twenty eighteen episode on Adidas Versus Puma.
It's the German version of the Hatfield Versus the McCoys,
except with cool sports apparel rather than overalls. And one
of the things I noticed at the end of this
episode is that sometimes when we're just doing our thing,
talking back and forth like we do, we'll have some
(00:22):
throwaway comment or side conversation or something that takes on
much greater significance years on. It's one of the interesting
things about talking out loud for seventeen years at any rate.
Sarrak Vodka, anyone.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles w Chuck Bryant, There's Andrew over there, the guest producer.
I'm wearing Adidas, Chuck is wearing Puma, and Andrew's wearing Reebok.
None of us are speaking to one another right now.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, it's weird. Andrew was wearing white Rebock high tops
with bronze pantyhose and orange Dolphin running shorts. Well any
claims he doesn't work for Hooters part time.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Oh oh oh, yes, I like that.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
You didn't know that because that means you don't go
into Hooters.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
No, No, I've seen pictures on TV.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
I had to go. Actually, I've only been there once
and that was when I worked at that awful job
with the Chicken Killers, and it was on a stupid
work trip. They made me go on and that was
like the only place in town. Yep, And all these
yocals that I worked with were like, yeah, man, let's
go to Hooters. And I went in there and I
was just like, oh my lord, what is they were
(01:47):
trapped in time.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I've been there a couple of times actually, when I
was a younger, younger. Man.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
It's the same, I imagine it is.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
I'm sure. And I was there on my twenty first
birthday in Jacksonville because it was the only place. It
was like a Tuesday night or something, and I was like,
this is this is not the best twenty first birthday
all ever have.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, and hey, we don't want to yuck your yum.
If you're if you work at Hooters or if you
love going there, more power to you. Sure, sure, why not? Right?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
That's pretty awesome that you said you don't want to
yuck anyone's yum.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Yeah, it's funny. I was thinking about a couple of
weeks ago when, uh, it was like the Costanza moment
when you thought of a line after the moment. Yeah,
when you were talking about how I was crazy for
not liking olives and I got on to you, I
should have said, don't yum my yuck.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Right, or I was just funny you said that. Because
I was thinking about that later on too, I thought
that I should have said, well, actually, I'm not yucking
your yum. I'm yucking your yuck, which is different. H
you know, think about it, man, are you thinking about it?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I think it's weird that we both thought about that
moment afterward. I think so too, because usually we just
go back into our hyperbolic chambers and float for the
next six days.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
It's pretty great life. We have pretty nice just soaking
in our own urine. God, don't you pee in your
hyperbaric chamber?
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Well yeah, but I mean that's how you're supposed to
fill it up, right.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Right, So chuck. Obviously, what we're talking about today is
athletic gear, sports shoes in particular, and two of the
most well known sports brands in the entire world, Adidas
and Puma. And some people might not know this, chuck,
(03:38):
but Adidas and Puma were founded by two brothers who
spent many decades of their lives not speaking to one another.
And some people might even know that that they are
rival brands founded by rival brothers, but I guarantee they
don't know the full story behind one of the most
bitter family rivalries of all time that gave us Adidas
(04:00):
and Puma. And it is extraordinarily fascinating. There's there's Nazis,
there's Run DMC, there's all this stuff all rolled into
one and it turns out that this is it's one
of the better stories I've ever come across.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
That's right. And before we dive into that awesome story,
to head off emails, I know, I said hyperbolic inside
of Hepperbarrick. No such thing as a hyperbolic chamber.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
I know it could be it's a shamber that it's like,
I'm the biggest shamer.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Ever probably so. All right, So this is a great story,
and I had heard bits and pieces of this over
the years, But it is interesting that Nazis and Run
DMC and feuding brothers all come together to cause you
know my Pumas. I've been a Puma guy, sure for many,
(04:49):
many years, even though I did have a pair of
Adidas Superstars at one point, but they're two.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Flashy.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
No, I liked them, but they were you know, white
shoes aren't good on me. I get get them too dirty,
too quick.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
So now I just vary my Pumas between the black
and the black suede and sort of like the olive
green swade.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Usually. You know, Adidas makes non white shoes you could try.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah, but those classic white Superstars with the three blue stripes,
Oh yeah, those are the ones.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
The shelters. Yeah, well, I mean they have some other
cool ones too, like Gazelle's are pretty cool, like the
flat bottomed soccer shoe.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
And yeah, my brother was in du i worred Gazell's
for a while when I was a soccer poser. But
my brother was into Stan Smiths.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Oh yeah, those are cool too. I've got some stand Smiths.
They are like this blue mesh. And now that I
think about it, if I have a loyalty to either one,
it would be Adidas. But I don't. I don't consider
myself like Adidas loyal.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Well, I'm a Puma guy just because they look good
on me in their comfy But I was also a
low top Converse All Star guy for a while. And
in high school. Of course, in the preppy days, I
was all about the tree torns.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
I never had tree torns.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
It was a look.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Oh, I know for sure I was comfy. I was
right after tree torns when I started to get into
shoes case wiss we're in.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, I never had any of those.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Those are cool.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
And then what was the other shoe? The Vans. There's
a particular style of vans that I really still enjoy.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
The slip on ones with the black and white checks.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
No, those are cool, but I don't know if I
can pull those off at forty seven.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
You could, but people will laugh at you behind your back.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
That's already happening. Yeah, I'll remember at some point.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Okay, well, just shout it out.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
And plus, I just wanted to cover our basis by
saying as many name brands as possible.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Don't forget British Nights, not the b KS yep, So chuck, Yes,
let's start the story. Shall We were gonna have to
get in the way back machine for this.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
One, okay, and this is also full of urine.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
So that was you though. Let's let everybody know. We're
going to go back to the end of World War
One in Germany and we're going to go to a
little town that I'm going to let you pronounce because
I've been trying and I cannot do it.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
And I thought it was interesting that we're recording this
now because we just acknowledged and recognized the one hundred
years removed from.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
World War One, the end of World War One, Yeah,
and the beginning of the Spanish flu that killed like
three times as many people right after it.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah, that's another celebration.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Right, So we're going back there, We're just going back
one hundred days almost to the day.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah. And so the name of that town is Hertzo Generach.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Well I could have done at least that good.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah, Hertzel Generach.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
It's not exactly said that like that. Here, let's play
this Helzel Oh that's how it said. Okay, okay, so
maybe we should just have that voice say it for us,
but we're not going to it. Turns out the locals
just called the town Hurtzo. Sure, that's all we'll call it,
but it's a little tiny village in Bavaria.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
They can't even pronounce it.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
No, They're like, we're not even going to try. And
we were born here. Don't be too hard on yourself, Josh,
is what they're saying. So in Hertzo, it's a little
town in Bavaria, a little village. There's a river running
through it.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yes. And in around nineteen eighteen, one of the villagers
who was born there, a guy named Adolph Dassler, takes
a seat in his mother's laundry. His mother ran a
laundry out of their house, and he starts cobbling athletic shoes,
specifically track shoes, I think, to begin with, and he
(08:51):
had a knack for it. He started making shoes that
athletes actually wanted pretty early on, pretty much out of
the gate, and he started doing so well so quickly
that within a year or two he asked his older brother,
who is by far the more outgoing extrovert sales many
type of the of the two brothers, his older brother Rudolph,
(09:14):
to start selling his shoes, start kind of creating a
business operation out of it. And I think within just
a few years they had twelve employees, and they founded
a company called Sports Farbrick Gabruder Dostler, which they call
Getta for short.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah, so Gabruda is, you know, for Brothers. So Gabruda
Dossler is the Dossler Brothers ship company. And people were like, wow,
so I don't have to wear my high heeled leather
sport boot any longer, I bitch.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
I don't have to tie some sharp rocks to the
bottom on my feet.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
So their nicknames you'll probably here is referred to them
as Addi and Rudy are ud I and you'll know,
if you kind of put your head to it, you
can see where this is headed.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
This is exciting.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
So the laundry business wasn't going well, so like you said,
little Addi started making these shoes and things started going great.
And it turns out they made a pretty good team
at first because they complimented one another in what they
were and what they were good at. So Addi was
creative and he was the brains, and Rudyo was a
little more extroverted and he was a really good salesperson.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Right, So they start to do a pretty good, pretty
good business and it's if you're like, well, it's a
weird thing to start doing as a younger man, to
start making supports shoes. It turns out that Hurtzo is
like a shoemaking town. It has a long tradition of shoemaking.
In nineteen twenty two, for example, their population was thirty
(10:47):
five hundred, but they had one hundred and twelve shoemakers.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
That's a high shoemaker to regular population ratio. So it's
not the weirdest thing ever. But they're plotting along. They're
making really high quality shoes. Like right out of the gate,
Atti had a real, like I said, a talent for
making high quality athletic shoes. And one of the first
things they made were track shoe that one of these
(11:13):
articles says looks like a ballet slipper with some nails
coming out of the front of it, the front bottom
of the four soule, and it was it just changed everything.
It was a genuinely great track shoe. At the time,
the people who were running sprinters, who were running track,
they didn't have any traction when they were taking off.
(11:35):
This gave them traction and just gave them an immediate
leg up. Over the competition, and so the athletes like
really really liked the shoes that they were putting out,
and the companies started to grow and grow and grow,
and then I think the nineteen twenty eight Olympics in
Los Angeles is where they really debuted their shoes and
(11:56):
a German sprinter was wearing a pair of their track shoes.
He won was a bronze medal, but he won a
bronze medal wearing the Dassler Brothers.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Shoes as a German sprinter exactly, so that should say
it all.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
It does.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
So he was wearing these track spikes and this helped him,
This got him a little bit of notoriety. But it
was really in nineteen thirty six in Berlin at that
very very famous Olympic Games, where a young athlete named
Jesse Owens dominated and literally tore up the track wearing
(12:30):
those Gibruda Dossler track spikes with Hitler in the stands,
and people are like, those shoes are amazing, and Jesse
Owens was like, it's kind of me, but yeah, sure
the shoes are great, but I'm also a vastly superior
athlete to the rest of these jumps out here.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah, So that was the Olympics that Jesse Owens famously
finished in first place, won the gold and did another
lap around the track, went up into the stands and
slapped Hitler right in the face.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Oh Man slapt his little stash right off that lip.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
So the fact that Jesse Owens was wearing these shoes
immediately brought international attention to get the Gebruder Dossler company.
So they I saw one article that said, had World
War Two not happened, this business would have just gone
global immediately, and it started to. But then when World
(13:26):
War two broke out, and that was the nineteen thirty
six Olympics, I think I said the nineteen twenty eight Olympics.
It was I think the nineteen thirty two Olympics that
I talked about first. But at the nineteen thirty six Olympics,
within just a couple of years, the Nazis invaded Poland
and were running Germany, and World War Two kicked off
in earnest and the time for sports apparel kind of
(13:51):
got derailed a little bit.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Yeah. So, just like in the United States and actually
in countries all over the world, the war effort was
It's not like they were just like, all right, we
have a few companies that manufacture military needs for our military,
and that's going to be good enough. It's like, no,
we need to really co opt kind of any manufacturing
(14:14):
that we want to to go toward the war effort.
And certainly Germany did that along with the US and
kind of everyone else and everything from Hugo Boss to
Lufthansa to these little cheemakers in the small town in Bavaria.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah, their factories were co opted for the war effort basically,
and what the Dossler Brothers factory ended up making are
something called the ponzer Shrek, which means the tank Terror
and it was modeled after the American Bazukah, which was
one of the first shoulder mounted, recoil less rocket launchers
(14:55):
that had enough power to punch right through a tank
and blow up everybody inside. They were nasty little buggers.
And the ponzer Shrek was the German version of the Bazuka.
And the German version of the Bazuka was created in
the Dossler Brothers shoe factory.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yeah, it's December nineteen forty three is when they kind
of made the full switch in these little you know,
German ladies who were sewing shoes the week before were
now manufacturing German bozukahs. The good news is by this time,
because these things were really effective actually, and had they been,
(15:36):
had they been brought into the war sooner, things might
have really changed. But thankfully, by this time, even though
they were doing the job, it was too late. The
tides had turned and the Allies were steaming toward victory,
and even though they started pumping out these bazukahs, it
was sort of too little, too late.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah. Have you ever wondered about the name bazuka?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Not until just now?
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Okay, Well I did, and I was like, what does
a bazuka mean? Apparently there was a an entertainer, I
think he might have been vaudeville, kind of a country act,
and he Joe. I can't remember his name, it doesn't matter.
He created a musical instrument out of brass called a
bazuka and it was kind of like a trumpet a
(16:20):
trombone together. It was a weird little instrument, but he
was popular enough that and the bazuka looked like his
instrument enough that it became called the bazukah. This shoulder
mounted rocket launcher.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Interesting, I thought so too, Sure, why not?
Speaker 1 (16:35):
But the point is is that all of a sudden,
the Germans, who had been totally helpless against the American
tank divisions, were messing the American tank divisions up. And
the source of their their power was the Dossler Brothers
shoe factory. And you mentioned there are seamstresses welding bazukas together. Yeah,
(16:55):
they're also in their factory. There was forced labor of
French pow.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
You sure.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
So they had slaves and seamstresses working together to create
bazookas to take out the American tank divisions or the
Allied tank divisions thanks to the companies that would eventually
become Adidas and Puma.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
All right, that's a great setup. That's thank you. That's
only part one into what is a very interesting story.
So we're gonna take a little break and we'll come
back and talk about what went wrong with these two
brothers right after this as why why s k as.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
You should definitely should know our childhood each s k.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
All Right, So we're gotta we gotta go back in
time a little bit, because we we sped right up
to World War Two.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
It was just too interesting to wait to talk about
any longer.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
But we need to go back to about nineteen thirty
three because these brothers ended up fracturing in a big,
big way. And there have been, you know, some legendary
sibling rivalries through the years, but this is really one
of the greats. And I believe even Rudy wrote as
an older man, the relation to my brother was ideal
(18:21):
from nineteen twenty four to nineteen thirty three. Then his
young wife tried to interfere with business Mattis, although she
with us sixteen years had no experience at all, and
the warfare agan. So here's how the story goes, is it.
In nineteen thirty three, Otti was indeed married to a
sixteen year old, which seems very creepy now, but back
(18:44):
then it was not the strangest thing in the world.
Slightly less creepy, slightly less creepy. Well, they just it
was a different time, Okay. So he was married to
a sixteen year old and tried to get involved in
the business. Rudy was not happy about this, and they
all lived together. The two brothers and their wives all
lived together in the same townhouse. Yeah, which is not
(19:06):
a great recipe. For success anyway, right, you know, you
need to have your own place.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
So you can imagine that all the little bickering and
snide remarks and just all the stuff that if you
have two couples that don't really really really like and
love each other living together will will accumulate. If you
translate that to a business relationship, it's going to be
hard on the business than it was, for sure. So
(19:32):
there was apparently a series of just little things like that.
But as far as the family legend goes, the real
break happened during World War Two when the Allies were
bombing the village of Herzo and the Rudy and his
wife made it made their way to the bunker, the
(19:54):
bomb shelter, and shortly after that, Audi and his wife,
I think her name is Kata, they made their way
into the bomb shelter and when they entered, he said, oh,
it looks like the bastards are here again. And Oddi
apparently went to his grave saying that he was referring
to the Allied bombers, but Rudy took it that Oddie
(20:14):
was talking about Rudy and his wife, and apparently that
was the final straw.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Yeah, this was true evidence that things were really bad,
if something as simple, possibly as just a little misunderstanding
of whether or not the bastards were the Allied's bombing
or you my brother and my sister in law. Right,
So I mean things are pretty bad if this is
what did it.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Right. So that's World War two still going on, and
at some point Rudy gets called to go fight for
the Nazis. He gets drafted, so Rudy has to go
to war, and the whole time he's away, he's he's
so this rift has already happened, So he's suspecting one
that his brother and his brother's wife plotted to get
(20:58):
him drafted, and he can't get that idea out of
his head so much so that apparently multiple times he
deserted his post to go home to make sure that
he wasn't being ousted from the business he'd built with
his brother. And then he gets arrested for desertion, and
he's sure that his little brother ratted him out for desertion,
which he may have, and so he's arrested. He's held
(21:21):
for a while, and as he's making his way back
after the war to Hurtze, he gets picked up by
the Allies for under suspicion of being a Gestopo agent.
He's sure again his little brother Addi who got him
this time landed in a pow camp that he stays
him for a little while, and it turns out he
(21:43):
was right. There is documentary evidence from an American officer
who took the accusation down. And apparently it was Addi
who went to the Americans and said, my brother is
a Gestapo agent. He may want to arrest him. This
is the level of stuff he's others are doing to
one another. And the rift just kept getting bigger and
(22:04):
bigger and bigger. There's one other thing we have to say,
because the wife, the younger wife, the sixteen year old Kata,
gets historically blamed for creating this rift. I think in
a lot of ways unfairly sure, she's also the one
who saved the family business single handedly.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah. So in April nineteen forty five, the Americans march
into Hurze. Those tanks pull up in front of that
factory and the soldiers, American soldiers are out there like
kind of going over what they should do. Should we
destroy this building or not.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
This is the place where the Ponzer shreks were made.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah. So Audi's wife Kata comes out and she basically
walks right up to these enemy soldiers and says, we
only want to make shoes. We only desire to make shoes.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
And they're like, why are you talking like Colonel Klink and.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
She said, okay, And that's basically like she convinced them
to spare the factory. They did so, and not only that,
the Air Force US Air Force set up operations there
at their air base and realized that they really like
these shoes.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Well, they found out that this was the company that
made Jesse Owen's famous track shoes.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Yeah, and so they went off the charts. They started
getting these huge orders for sports teams, American sports teams
because of this.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
So this is all going on. It's all starting while
Rudy's off in a pow camp because his brother ratted
him out, and the business all of a sudden is
starting to turn international. Like you said, people around the
world are taking notice of this thanks to the American
gis who were coming back with this Getta sports wear.
(23:51):
And when Rudy comes back, it's done. His brothers ratted
him out. There was the whole thing in the bomb shelter,
and the brothers split the company that they built together.
They split Gabbruder, Dessler and or Dostler and they go
off and found their own companies.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah, fifteen years after that bunker incident.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
So it was it took a long time to finally
boil over, right, and in between there was another war.
They were not good Nazis, we should point out kind of,
you know, they were members of the Nazi Party, and
Rudy did get drafted, but like he said, he deserted
his post a lot and they, you know, they really
did just want to sell shoes.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Right. He's like Dwight Shrewds uncle or grandfather who spent
a lot of the war in an Allied pow camp.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
That's right. So, like you said, they split up the company.
And we mentioned earlier that this river ran through the
center of town, and I said significant, and it is
significant because it literally divided the town and they set
up their business. It's not like one of them said,
well I'm going off to Berlin. Right, They just set
up camp on opposite sides of that river. ADDI Dossler said,
(25:05):
I will name my company Adi Das.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Actually, at first they named it Adas.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Well yeah, but everyone said that stinks.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Well, no, that was a different one. That one. There
was a children's footwear line already called Oddis, so he
added the eye and turned it into Adidas.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Yeah, Rudy went with Ruda, and everyone said that no
one's going to buy a shoes named Ruda, especially in
the United States, And he said, I don't understand, and
they said, don't worry about it. So somehow he got
Puma out of Ruda, right, which I don't get, but
it's a name that's stuck.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Yeah, and it works. Puma is definitely better than Ruda
for sure.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
So these two go off and form directly competing companies
that split from the same company that the brothers had
founded together, and Adidas and Puma started making pretty good
headway out of the gate. First, Rudy had the sales team,
had the marketing team, had the ability to move some product.
(26:09):
But Audi had the technical know how, the dedication to
making high quality footwear that athletes, like professional athletes, wanted
to wear, and so he could get his shoes onto
athletes who would wear them on the world stage. And
eventually his his I guess his tech won out over
(26:30):
his brothers, and from a very early stage on, Adidas
has always led Puma, at least as far as like
sales revenue goes.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, and you know, there were mistakes from both of
them along the way business wise. One of the big
ones for Puma early on was that Rudolph got into
a spat with a coach of the German national soccer team,
and of course all that did was open the door
for his brother and Adidas to go in there and
(27:01):
say what about the shoes, which is exactly what happened.
And so at the nineteen fifty four World Cup, Germany
wears Adidas with those signature stripes, and even though they
were not favored at all West Germany actually won against
who Hungary I believe, and that was a huge, huge
deal on a national international stage.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
It was like the miracle on ice on grass.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
You mean, they were stoned.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
They were all stoned out of their gourds.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
The miracle on ice on grass. That might have legs,
My friend, I think need to trademark that.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Well, I do officially right now, trademarked.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
I love it. So that was one mistake. Adidas would
of course go on to make some mistakes later. I
know that you sent that one article where they talked
about how they said, you know at one point that
like yogging, no one's going to do that, So we're
not going to make yogging shoes and aerobics.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
That's that's a flash in the pan. Sure, who cares
about physical fitness.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
So you mentioned Reebok earlier. It's hard for the young
folk out there who are listening to know this, but
there was a time when Reebok was the name in
sports apparel.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Well plus all yeah, and in Reebok. This article says
that they lost their way at some point, but the
way that Reebok kind of took the lead for a
little while, I was saying, no, we'll get into jogging,
we'll get into aerobics, and we'll make this stuff at
a time when Adidas and Puma were ignoring it. One
of the other mistakes that both Adidas and Puma made
(28:38):
was that they were so focused on beating one another
man they just completely dropped the ball. As it were
on the rise of Nike Ya and Nike was able
to take over and apparently right out of the gate,
and since then, Nike's always been the leader in sports apparel.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Yeah, and Adidas is two and Pumas three. Right, yeah, amazing.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
So you have an option these days you can buy
your sports apparel from a company that's been known to
use child labor, or company that used forced French labor
under the auspices of the Nazi Party in World War Two. Hooray,
let's take a break.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, we'll take a break, and we'll talk about how
this rift still oddly carries over in that town today
and run DMC as why s K.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Definitely should know lar childs of each.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Y s K. All right, So back in the day
when they first split off this company and that river's
running through this town, it was a really big deal.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
It wasn't just a sibling rivalry. It became a town
wide rival and that you you worked for one company
or the other as a family like a husband and wife.
Didn't work, they didn't split up, and one worked at
Puma and one worked at Adidas.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
But plus, I mean, if you fell in love with
somebody from a family across the river like you, that
was sorry, Yeah you got a Romeo and Juliet thing
going on, that ain't gonna work. That crazy it is,
And I was glad that this one of the local
historians who was interviewed for one of these articles said
it wasn't like bloody or anything like sue lost their
lives over this. It was just, you know, if you
(30:33):
worked for Puma, you stayed on the Puma side of
the river. If you worked for Adidas, you stayed on
the Adida side of the river. And each each group
kept to themselves. That was all.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, And it still carries over to this day, some
of those recent interviews that we both read. I mean,
it's certainly now it's a little more good natured ribbing.
But they say, when you walk around this town, walk
through a playground and you see will you will see
kids kit it out in all Adidas or all Puma.
And this is carried down from generations where they were
(31:03):
Adidas or Puma families, and it was a really big
deal and still remains so to this day, such that
the mayor who actually came from a Puma family. Oh yeah,
but to be mayor, you can't, you know.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
You got to be a politician.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Sure, so he will wear to some events, casual events,
Puma gear and sometimes Adidas gear. Eventually, in two thousand
and nine, they had a friendly soccer match between the
official Puma sponsor team and Adidas team, and he wore
one Puma shoe and one Adidas shoe just to remain neutral,
I guess.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
And to look like a total jackass.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Probably so then it showed him rubbing like his pum
his Adidas foot. Later on they called him on camera.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
So this is like you said, there was a soccer
game that was played between Adidas and Puma, kind of
a reconciliation thing on International Peace Day back in I
think two thousand and nine. Yeah, that happened. Think about this.
The the Rudy and Addi Dossler died in the seventies,
within four years of each other. This was two thousand
(32:07):
and nine before the companies finally kind of had this
reconciliation game. And yeah, today still it's like you kind of, well,
you'll gently, you know, make fun of somebody wearing Adidas
if you're a Puma family or whatever. But while the
brothers were alive, you just steered clear of everybody who
was on the on the other side, so much so
(32:29):
that Herze was known as the town of the lowered gays,
because if you came upon somebody on the street, you
would look at their shoes to see what shoes they
were wearing before you decided whether you're going to talk
to them.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
That's so funny.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
It was that established this brother These brothers hatred and
rivalry of one another, and they didn't speak for decades,
spread out into the town that was divided by this river,
and the town itself took sides because of this rift
between these brothers that all started supposedly in this bomb
(33:02):
shelter during World War Two.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Yeah, and the mayor Hacker his first name is German.
Could that be right?
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Uh? Journalism on the German or the journalist is really
lazy and didn't They're just like, it's a he's a German,
We're just gonna call him that.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
I wonder if he pronounces that German that's what I
or Herreman because they don't say Germany over there anyway.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
But yeah, they say Deutsche Linn.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
But but would would it be Herrmann or no? I
guess they spell that Hermans with an H.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Yeah, I think it would be mayor German Hakka right, oh, yeah,
there is an h German Hackey Sokka who's on grass.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
But he says if someone someone comes in through the door.
To this day, your gay still wanders to their shoes.
It's just in the DNA of those people that this
athletic gear is so important. It's so strange. It's such
a cool, cool, weird story.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
It is a great story of sibling rivalry and bitterness
and hatred.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
And like you said, they didn't speak for decades. Apparently
much later in life, there were a couple of times
when they were a rumored to have spoken. Once. I
think they ran into each other at an airport. Once
they saw each other at a hotel. And I believe
on the deathbed which one tried to get in touch
(34:25):
with the other, Rudy. Rudy put out the call said
I would like to see my brother Adi one more time,
and Audi went, no, thanks, I'm good nine.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Can you believe it?
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Yeah, man, that's tough.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
So they died. The families sold the business in the
eighties late eighties, and they got bought by like corporate conglomerates. Sure, ironically,
Puma now owns Reeboch and Gucci owns Puma. Adidas is
still just Adidas, but again it's it's owned by like
(35:01):
a mega conglomerate, and they've they've just gone enormous and
make billions of dollars a year, so the families aren't
necessarily involved. But one family member still works in the business.
His name is Frank Dossler. I believe he was Rudy's grandson,
and he used to work at Puma. He was pretty
(35:22):
high up in Puma.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Now he works as the head of the legal department
for Adidas.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Man, So let's switch inside.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
It's a pretty good indication of how how much this
cold war is kind of thawed between the two companies
quite a bit because the people who are running it
have no skin in the game. They don't care anymore,
you know.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah. Or he's an attorney and he would just after
the most.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Money, right, He's like, let me suck your.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
So we have a fun little PostScript on this. I
know we've been talking about run DMC and again, you
Youngin's It might be second nature now to associate athletic
gear and hip hop and rap music and culture, but
back in the early nineteen eighties that was not the
case until run DMC came along.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
No, like your your rappers probably dressed like a Gone
and King, Yeah, or maybe.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Like the New York dolls, yeah, or just like I
mean sometimes I feel like I've seen just like denim
jackets and just sort of like just sort of streetwear,
which is the unhippous thing I've ever said.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
It was pretty unhipp I didn't want to say anything,
but I'm glad streetwear, so you know, play clothes. So
run DMC changed everything when they released a single called
My Adidas. Yeah, and I saw elsewhere that they released
a single My Adidas kind of in retaliation to song
(36:47):
a song called felon Shoes. So if you ever noticed
that run DMC wore their Adidas without laces with the
tongues popped out, I noticed that was supposedly because that's
how people in prison had to wear their shoes because
they weren't allowed to have shoelaces. And they were kind
of saying like, we're down with all of our buddies
in prison. Interesting, So this song fell in Shoes basically
(37:08):
was making fun of that and basically teaching kids not
to not to emulate prisoners, and run DMC took issue
with that, and they ended up releasing My Adidas the
song on Raisin Hell in nineteen eighty six. Sorry Raisin Hell, Yes,
which I remember. My family was on a bus to
Disney World once, I think, and the windows were foggy,
(37:29):
and I was so into run DMC. I just wrote
Raisin Hell in the fog on the window.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Dude.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
People on the bus thought that was really hilarious.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
That is a great story.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
So I was into my Adidas too because of Run DMC.
But it wasn't just me. Apparently, if you went to
a run DMC show on the Raisin Hell Tour or
the Together Forever tour in nineteen eighty six or eighty seven,
when they sang my Adidas, everybody would take off their
shoes and hold their Adidas in the air. Yeah, that's
how That's how big of an impact the song had.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Yeah. And in nineteen eighty six, a senior employee Adidas
named Angelo Anastasio went to that tour at Madison Square
Garden saw this happen with the Adida sneakers, and it
was like, hold on a minute, wait just a second,
we could have something here. Ran back to the headquarters
(38:21):
and within just a few days they signed them to
a million dollar endorsement deal, and that was like a
sea change forward for hip hop groups getting money in
all sorts of ways.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Yeah, and apparently it made Adidas's sales just go through
the roof.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
Oh yeah, yeah. And it's like that began the marriage
of like I'm going to put out a record, I'm
going to get a shoe deal, I might get a
vodka sponsor, like, oh yeah, I'll get money flowing in
from all kinds of directions and run DMC started it all.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
A Vodkas fonts or that's hilarious.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Sure, I feel like I've seen that.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
No, oh yeah, you know you totally have like P
Diddy and Sarrak vodka. I think, yeah, look it works.
I associate P Didty and Sarrak vodka.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Andrew's nodding, I means.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
You correct, awesome, Thanks Andrew.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Jerry would have been like, what, I'm my miso's getting cold, right,
can you guys hurry up?
Speaker 1 (39:17):
We will hurry up, Ghost of Jerry. If you want
to know anything else about Adidas and Puma, we'll just
go start reading up more. There's actually a book by
a woman named Barbara Schmitt called Sneaker Wars, appropriately all
about the rift between Adidas and Puma, So if you
want to know more about it, that's a pretty good
place to start. And since I said that it's time
(39:40):
for listener mayo.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Yeah, I'm gonna call this sponges. Okay, Hey, guys, I
was listening to Pando and I was excited y'all mentioned
glass sponges, which are thought to be the oldest animals
on Earth. I am a PhD student at the Scripts
Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, and I study marine
sponges because they make all sorts of unique molecules that
(40:04):
can be used as new medicines. I think sponges are
the coolest animals on Earth, and I'd love to share
some of my favorite sponge fun facts. You ready? Oh yeah.
Not only are sponges thought to be the oldest living,
single living animals on Earth, but some evolutionary biologists even
think sponges were the first animals to ever evolve. In
other words, our last common animal ancestor could very well
(40:28):
have been a sponge.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
That's so cool.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Did you know the first antiviral drug approved by the
FDA was developed from a molecule and a c sponge.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
I didn't until just now.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
As a PhD student, I collect and study sponges because
they are known to produce thousands of bioactive molecules, many
of which have medicinal potential. I think it's pretty incredible
that the ocean may hold the cure to some of
the most devastating human diseases, and I hope my work
might inspire people to protect the world's oceans and the
valuable resources within them.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Heck yeah, thanks for all the work you guys put
into the show. Y'all have kept me company on mini
long night in the lab with my sponges.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
That's awesome. It makes me want to go chew on
a sponge and see what happened.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
That's right. That's from Kayla Wilson from San Diego.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
Thanks a lot, Kayla, Thanks for the work you're doing too.
Thank you for saving humanity from grave diseases.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Yeah, we'll look into these sponges as you call them.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
If you want us to look into anything that we
put in scare quotes, well we want to know about it.
You can go onto our website stuff youshould Know dot com,
follow us on our social links. There you can get
in touch with us. You can also send us a
good old fashioned email, wrap it up, spank that thing
on the bottom and send it off to Stuff podcast
at HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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