Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, There's Andrew over there, the
Speaker 1: guest producer. I'm wearing Adidas, Chuck is wearing Puma, Andrew's
Speaker 1: wearing Reebok. None of us are speaking to one another
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, it's weird. Andrew was wearing white Reebok
Speaker 1: high tops with bronze pantyhose and orange Dolphin running shorts.
Speaker 1: And he claims he doesn't work for Hooters part time.
Speaker 1: Oh oh oh, yes, I like that. You didn't know
Speaker 1: that because that means you don't go into Hooters. No, No,
Speaker 1: I've seen pictures on TV. I had to go. Actually,
Speaker 1: I've only been there once, and that was when I
Speaker 1: worked at that awful job with the Chicken Killers, and uh,
Speaker 1: it was on a stupid work trip. They made me
Speaker 1: go on and that was like the only place in town,
Speaker 1: and all these yokels that I worked with were like, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: let's go to Hooters. And I went in there and
Speaker 1: I was just like, my lord, what is They were
Speaker 1: trapped in time. I've been there a couple of times.
Speaker 1: Actually when I was a younger, younger, man, it's the same,
Speaker 1: I imagine it is. I'm sure. And I was there
Speaker 1: on my twenty first birthday in Jacksonville because it was
Speaker 1: the only place open. It was like it's a Tuesday
Speaker 1: night or something, and I was like, this is this
Speaker 1: is not the best twenty first birthday all ever. Half yeah,
Speaker 1: and hey, we don't want to yuck your yum. If
Speaker 1: you're if you work at Hooters, or if you'd love
Speaker 1: going there, more power to you. Sure, sure, right, that's
Speaker 1: pretty awesome that you said you don't want to yuck
Speaker 1: any once yung. Yeah, it's funny. I was thinking about
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago when uh, it was like
Speaker 1: the Castanza moment when he thought of a line after
Speaker 1: the moment when you were talking about how I was
Speaker 1: crazy for not liking olives, and I got onto you.
Speaker 1: I should have said, don't yum my yuck, right, or
Speaker 1: I was just funny you said that. Because I was
Speaker 1: thinking about that later on too, I thought that I
Speaker 1: should have said, well, actually, I'm not yucking you're yum.
Speaker 1: I'm yucking you're yuck, which is different. You know, think
Speaker 1: about it, man, are you thinking about it. I think
Speaker 1: it's weird that we both thought about that moment afterward.
Speaker 1: I think so too, because usually we just go back
Speaker 1: into our hyperbolic chambers and float for the next six days.
Speaker 1: It's pretty great life. We have pretty nice just soaking
Speaker 1: in our own urine. God, don't you pee in your
Speaker 1: hyperbaric chamber? Yeah, but I mean that's how you're supposed
Speaker 1: to fill it up, right, right, So, Chuck, Obviously, what
Speaker 1: we're talking about today is athletic gear, sports shoes in particular,
Speaker 1: and two of the most well known sports brands in
Speaker 1: the entire world, Adidas and Puma. And some people might
Speaker 1: not know this, Chuck, but Adidas and Puma were founded
Speaker 1: by two brothers who spent many decades of their lives
Speaker 1: not speaking to one another. And some people might even
Speaker 1: know that that their arrival brands founded by rival brothers,
Speaker 1: But I guarantee they don't know the full story behind
Speaker 1: the one of the most bitter family rivalries of all
Speaker 1: time that gave us Adidas and Puma. And it is
Speaker 1: extraordinarily fascinating. There's there's Nazis, there's run d m C.
Speaker 1: There's all this stuff all rolled into one and it
Speaker 1: turns out that this is it's one of the better
Speaker 1: stories I ever come across. That's right. And before we
Speaker 1: dive into that awesome story to head off emails, I
Speaker 1: know I said hyperbolic inside of Hipperbarick. No such thing
Speaker 1: as a hyperbolic chamber could be. It's a chamber that
Speaker 1: It's like, I'm the biggest chamber ever probably, So all right,
Speaker 1: so let's this is a great story. And I had
Speaker 1: heard uh bits and pieces of this over the years,
Speaker 1: but it is interesting that Nazis and run DMC and
Speaker 1: feuding brothers all come together too. Because you know, my Pumas.
Speaker 1: I've been a Puma guy for many, many years, even
Speaker 1: though I did have a pair of Adidas Superstars at
Speaker 1: one point, but they're too uh flashy. No, I liked them,
Speaker 1: but they were you know, white shoes aren't good on me.
Speaker 1: I get get them too dirty too quick. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: now I just vary my Pumas between the black and
Speaker 1: the black suede and sort of like the olive green
Speaker 1: swade usually. You know, Adidas makes non white shoes you
Speaker 1: could try. Yeah, but those classic white Superstars with the
Speaker 1: three blue stripes, those, yeah, those are the ones. The
Speaker 1: shell toes. Yeah, well, I mean they have some other
Speaker 1: cool ones to like. Gazelles are pretty cool, like the
Speaker 1: the flat bottomed soccer shoe. And yeah, my my brother
Speaker 1: was in duw I've worked Gazelles for a while when
Speaker 1: I was a soccer poser. But my brother was into
Speaker 1: Stan Smiths. Oh yeah, those are cool too. I've got
Speaker 1: some some stand Smiths. They are like this blue mesh.
Speaker 1: And now that I think about it, if I have
Speaker 1: a loyalty to either one, it would be Adidas. But
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't consider myself like Adidas loyal Well,
Speaker 1: I'm a Puma guy just because they look good on
Speaker 1: me and they're comfy. But I was also a low
Speaker 1: top Converse All Star guy for a while. And in
Speaker 1: high school, of course, in the preppy days, I was
Speaker 1: all about the Tree Torrents. I never had Tree Torrents.
Speaker 1: It was a look. Oh, I know for sure I was.
Speaker 1: I was right after Tree Torns when I started getting
Speaker 1: his shoes case Swiss We're in. Yeah, I've never had
Speaker 1: any of those. Uh. And then what was the other shoe?
Speaker 1: The the vans Um There's a particular style of Vans
Speaker 1: that I really still enjoy. The slip on ones with
Speaker 1: the black and white checks. No, those are cool, but
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can pull those off at seven.
Speaker 1: You could, but people will laugh at you behind your back.
Speaker 1: That's already happening. Uh yeah, I'll remember at some point. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: just shout it out. And plus, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: cover our basis by saying as many name brands as possible.
Speaker 1: Don't forget British Nights, the b KS. Um, So Chuck,
Speaker 1: let's start the story, shall We were gonna have to
Speaker 1: get in the way back machine for this one, okay,
Speaker 1: and this is also full of urine, so that was
Speaker 1: you though. Let's let's let everybody know. Um, we're gonna
Speaker 1: go back to the end of World War One in
Speaker 1: Germany and We're going to go to a little town
Speaker 1: that I'm going to let you pronounce because I've been
Speaker 1: trying and I cannot do it. And I thought it
Speaker 1: was interesting that we're recording this now because we just
Speaker 1: acknowledged and recognized the UH one years removed from World
Speaker 1: War One. The end of World War One, Yeah, in
Speaker 1: the beginning of the Spanish flu that killed like three
Speaker 1: times as many people. Right after it. It's another celebration,
Speaker 1: right so so we're going back there. We're just going
Speaker 1: back a hundred days almost to the day. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so that the name of that town is uh, well
Speaker 1: I could have done at least that good Hurtzela. It's
Speaker 1: it's not exactly said that like that. Here, let's let's
Speaker 1: play this. That's how it said. Okay, okay, So so
Speaker 1: maybe we should just have that voice say of for use,
Speaker 1: but we're not going to it. Turns out the locals
Speaker 1: just called the town hurts So, sure, that's all we'll
Speaker 1: call it. But it's a little tiny village in Bavaria.
Speaker 1: They can't even pronounce it. No, they're like, we're not
Speaker 1: even going to try. And we were born here. Don't
Speaker 1: don't be too hard on yourself, Josh, is what they're saying.
Speaker 1: Um so in Hurts. So it's a little town in Bavaria,
Speaker 1: little village. There's a river running through it, significantly. Yes.
Speaker 1: And in um around nineteen eighteen, one of the villagers
Speaker 1: who was born there, a guy named um Adolph desk Ler,
Speaker 1: takes a seat in his mother's laundry. His mother ran
Speaker 1: a laundry out of out of their house, and he
Speaker 1: starts cobbling athletic shoes, specifically track shoes, I think, to
Speaker 1: begin with, and he had a knack for it. Um,
Speaker 1: he started making shoes that athletes actually wanted pretty pretty
Speaker 1: early on, pretty much out of the gate, and he
Speaker 1: started doing so well so quickly that within a year
Speaker 1: or two, he asked his older brother, who was by
Speaker 1: far the more outgoing extrovert salesmany type of the of
Speaker 1: the two brothers, his older brother Rudolph, to start selling
Speaker 1: his shoes, start kind of creating a business operation out
Speaker 1: of it. And I think within just a few years, um,
Speaker 1: they had twelve employees and they founded a company called
Speaker 1: Sports far Brick Gabrueder Dassler, which they called Ghetta for short. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Gebruder is uh, you know for brothers. So Gebruda
Speaker 1: Dossler is the Dossler Brothers company. Um, And people were like, wow,
Speaker 1: so I don't have to wear my high heeled leather
Speaker 1: sport boot any longer, pitch, I don't have to tie
Speaker 1: some sharp rocks to the bottom on my feet. Uh.
Speaker 1: So their nicknames you'll probably heres refer to them as
Speaker 1: uh Addie and Rudy, r U d I and uh
Speaker 1: you'll if you kind of put your head to it.
Speaker 1: You can see where this is headed. This is exciting.
Speaker 1: So uh, the laundry business wasn't going well. So like
Speaker 1: you said, little Addie started making these shoes and things
Speaker 1: started going great. Um. And it turns out they made
Speaker 1: a pretty good team at first because they complimented one another,
Speaker 1: uh and what they were and what they were good at.
Speaker 1: So Addie was creative, uh and he was the brains
Speaker 1: and Rudy was a little more extroverted and he was
Speaker 1: a really good salesperson. Right, so they start to do
Speaker 1: a pretty good, pretty good business. Um. And it's it's
Speaker 1: if you're like, well, it's a weird thing to start
Speaker 1: doing as a younger man, to start making supports shoes.
Speaker 1: It turns out that hurt So is like a shoemaking town,
Speaker 1: has a long tradition of shoemaking. And in for example,
Speaker 1: their population was thirty undred, but they had a hundred
Speaker 1: and twelve shoemakers. That's a high shoemaker to regular population ratio.
Speaker 1: So it's not the weirdest thing ever. But they're plotting along,
Speaker 1: they're making really high quality shoes, like right out of
Speaker 1: the gate. Um, Addie had a real like I said,
Speaker 1: a talent for making high quality athletic shoes, and one
Speaker 1: of the first things they made were track shoe that
Speaker 1: that one of these articles says looks like a ballet
Speaker 1: slipper with some nails coming out of the front of it,
Speaker 1: the front, bottom, the four soul and it was um
Speaker 1: it just changed everything. It was a genuinely great track shoe.
Speaker 1: At the time, they they people who were running sprinters
Speaker 1: who are running track, they didn't have any traction when
Speaker 1: they were taking off. This gave them traction and just
Speaker 1: gave an immediate um lag up over the competition. And
Speaker 1: so the athletes like really really liked the shoes that
Speaker 1: they were putting out and the company started to grow
Speaker 1: and grow and grow, and then I think the nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty eight Olympics in Los Angeles is where they really
Speaker 1: debuted their shoes. And a German sprinter was wearing a
Speaker 1: pair of their track shoes and all he won was
Speaker 1: a bronze medal. But he won a bronze medal, uh
Speaker 1: wearing the Dassler Brothers shoes and as a German sprinter exactly,
Speaker 1: so that should say at all it does. So he
Speaker 1: was wearing these track spikes and this this helped him.
Speaker 1: This got him a little bit of notoriety, but it
Speaker 1: was really in Ni in Berlin at that very very
Speaker 1: famous Olympic Games, where a young athlete named Jesse Owens
Speaker 1: dominated and literally tore up the track wearing those uh
Speaker 1: Gibruda Dassler track spikes with Hitler in the stands and
Speaker 1: people are like, those shoes are amazing, and Jesse Owens
Speaker 1: was like, it's kind of me, but yeah, sure the
Speaker 1: shoes are great, but I'm also vastly superior athlete to
Speaker 1: the rest of these jumps out here. Yeah. So um.
Speaker 1: That was the Olympics that Jesse Owen's famously finished in
Speaker 1: first place, won the gold and did another lap around
Speaker 1: the track, went up into the stands and slapped Hitler
Speaker 1: right in the face. Man slapt his little stash right
Speaker 1: off that lip. So um. The fact that Jesse Owens
Speaker 1: was wearing these shoes immediately brought international attention to ghet A,
Speaker 1: the gi Brewer Um Dossler company. Um so they I
Speaker 1: saw one article that said, had World War two not happened,
Speaker 1: this this business would have just gone global immediately, and
Speaker 1: it started to. But then when World War two broke out,
Speaker 1: and that was the nineteen thirty six Olympics. I think
Speaker 1: I said the Olympics. It was I think that the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two Olympics that I talked about first. But
Speaker 1: at the Olympics. Within just a couple of years, the
Speaker 1: Nazis invaded Poland, and uh, we're running Germany and World
Speaker 1: War two kicked off in earnest and the time for
Speaker 1: sports apparel kind of got derailed a little bit. Yeah. So, um,
Speaker 1: just like in the United States and and actually in
Speaker 1: countries all over the world, Uh, the war effort was. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not like they were just like, all right, we
Speaker 1: have a few companies that manufacture military needs for our
Speaker 1: military and that's gonna be good enough. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: we need to really co opt kind of any manufacturing
Speaker 1: that we want to to go toward the war effort.
Speaker 1: And certainly Germany did that along with the US and
Speaker 1: and kind of everyone else. Um, and everything from Hugo
Speaker 1: Boss to luft Hanza to these little shoemakers in this
Speaker 1: small town in Bavaria. Yeah, they're they're factories were co
Speaker 1: opted for the war effort basically, and what the Dossler
Speaker 1: brother There's factory ended up making are something called the
Speaker 1: Ponza Shrek, which means the tank Terror, and it was
Speaker 1: modeled after the American Bazukah, which was one of the
Speaker 1: first shoulder mounted recoil lest rocket launchers that had enough
Speaker 1: power to punch right through a tank and blow up
Speaker 1: everybody inside. They were nasty little buggers. And the Ponza
Speaker 1: Shrek was the German version of the bazuka. And the
Speaker 1: German version of the Bazuka was created in the Dossler
Speaker 1: Brothers shoe factory. Yeah, it's uh, December nineteen forty three
Speaker 1: is when they kind of made the full switch in
Speaker 1: these these little you know, German ladies who were so
Speaker 1: in shoes the week before were now manufacturing uh, German bazukash.
Speaker 1: The good news is by this side because these things
Speaker 1: were really effective actually, and had they been um, had
Speaker 1: they been brought into the war sooner, thing might have
Speaker 1: really changed. But thankfully, by this time, even though they
Speaker 1: were doing the job, it was too late. The tides
Speaker 1: had turned and the Allies were were steaming toward victory,
Speaker 1: and even though they started pumping out these bazukas, it
Speaker 1: was sort of too little, too late. Yeah, have you
Speaker 1: ever wondered about the name bazuka, not until just now. Okay,
Speaker 1: well I did, and I was like, what does a
Speaker 1: bazooka mean? Apparently there was a an entertainer. I think
Speaker 1: he might have been vaudeville, kind of a country act,
Speaker 1: and he Joe, I can't remember his name, doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: He created a musical instrument out of brass called a bazuka,
Speaker 1: and um it was kind of like a trumpet and
Speaker 1: a trombone together. It was a weird little instrument, but
Speaker 1: he was popular enough that in the bazuka looked like
Speaker 1: his instrument enough that it became called the bazuka. This
Speaker 1: this shoulder mounted rocket launcher. Interesting, I thought, so too,
Speaker 1: Sure why not? But the point is is that all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the Germans, who had been totally helpless
Speaker 1: against the American tank divisions, were messing the American tank
Speaker 1: divisions up. And the source of their their power was
Speaker 1: the Dossler Brothers shoe factory. And you mentioned their their
Speaker 1: seamstresses welding bazukas together. They're also in their factory there
Speaker 1: was forced labor of French POWs, so they had slaves
Speaker 1: and the seamstresses working together to create bazukas. To take
Speaker 1: out the American tank divisions of the Allied tank divisions
Speaker 1: thanks to the companies that would eventually become Adidas and Puma.
Speaker 1: All Right, that's a great setup. That's only part one
Speaker 1: into what is a very interesting story. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a little break and we'll come back and talk about, um,
Speaker 1: what went wrong with these two brothers right after this
Speaker 1: as skak all Right, So we're gotta we gotta go
Speaker 1: back in time a little bit, because we we sped
Speaker 1: right up to World War Two. It was just too
Speaker 1: interesting to wait to talk about any longer. But we
Speaker 1: need to go back to about nineteen thirty three because, uh,
Speaker 1: these brothers ended up fracturing in a big, big way. Um.
Speaker 1: And there have been, you know, some legendary sibling rivalries
Speaker 1: through the years, but this is this is really one
Speaker 1: of the greats uh. And I believe even Rudy wrote,
Speaker 1: as an older man, the relation to my brother was
Speaker 1: ideal from nineteen twenty four to nineteen thirty three. Then
Speaker 1: his young wife tried to interfere with business matters, although she,
Speaker 1: with her sixteen years, had no experience at all, and
Speaker 1: the wall fapp again. So here's how the story goes,
Speaker 1: is it a nineteen thirty three Addie was uh, indeed
Speaker 1: married to a sixteen year old, which seems very creepy now,
Speaker 1: but back then it was not the strangest thing in
Speaker 1: the world. Slightly less creepy. Slightly less creepy. Well, they
Speaker 1: just it was a different time. So he was married
Speaker 1: to a sixteen year old and tried to get involved
Speaker 1: in the business. Rudy was not happy about this, and
Speaker 1: they all lived together. The two brothers and their wives
Speaker 1: all lived together in the same town house, which is
Speaker 1: not a great recipe for success anyway, right, You know,
Speaker 1: you need to have your own place. So you can
Speaker 1: imagine that all the little bickering and snide remarks and
Speaker 1: just all the stuff that if you have two couples
Speaker 1: that don't really really really like and love each other,
Speaker 1: um living together will will accumulate. If you translate that
Speaker 1: to a business relationship, it's going to be hard on
Speaker 1: the business than it was. So there was apparently am
Speaker 1: a series of just little things like that. But the
Speaker 1: as far as the family legend goes, the real break
Speaker 1: happened during World War Two when the Allies were bombing
Speaker 1: the juror the the village of Hurtzo and the Rudy
Speaker 1: and his wife made it made their way to the bunker,
Speaker 1: the bomb shelter, and shortly after that, Addie and his wife,
Speaker 1: I think her name was kata Um, they made their
Speaker 1: way into the bomb shelter and when they entered, he said, oh,
Speaker 1: it looks like the bastards are here again. And Addie
Speaker 1: apparently went to his grave saying that he was referring
Speaker 1: to the Allied bombers. But Rudy took it that Addie
Speaker 1: was talking about Rudy and his wife, and apparently that
Speaker 1: was the final straw. Yeah, this was true evidence that
Speaker 1: things were really bad. If something is simple, possibly it's
Speaker 1: just a little misunderstanding of whether or not the bastards
Speaker 1: were the Allies bombing or you my brother and my
Speaker 1: sister in law, right, So I mean things were things
Speaker 1: were pretty bad. If this is what did it? Right,
Speaker 1: So that that's World War Two still going on, and
Speaker 1: at some point Rudy gets called to go fight for
Speaker 1: the Nazis. He gets drafted, so Rudy has to go
Speaker 1: to war, and the whole time he's away, he's he's
Speaker 1: so this rift has already happened, so he's suspecting one
Speaker 1: that his brother and his brother's wife plotted to get
Speaker 1: him drafted. And he can't get that that idea out
Speaker 1: of his head so much so that apparently multiple times
Speaker 1: he deserted his post to go home to make sure
Speaker 1: that he wasn't being ousted from the business he built
Speaker 1: with his brother Um. And then he gets arrested for desertion,
Speaker 1: and he's sure that his little brother read it him
Speaker 1: out for desertion, and so he's arrested. He's held for
Speaker 1: a while, and as he's making his way back after
Speaker 1: the war to hurt So he gets picked up by
Speaker 1: the Allies for under suspicion of being a Gestapo agent.
Speaker 1: He's sure again this is a little brother ODDI who
Speaker 1: got him this time landed in a e OW camp
Speaker 1: that he stays in for a little while. And it
Speaker 1: turns out he was right. There is documentary evidence from
Speaker 1: an American officer who took the accusation down, and apparently
Speaker 1: it was Addie who went to the Americans and said,
Speaker 1: my brother is a Gesta. You may want to arrest him. Jerk.
Speaker 1: This is the level of stuff these brothers are doing
Speaker 1: to one another. Um, and the riff just kept getting
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger and bigger. There's one other thing we
Speaker 1: have to say, because uh, the wife, the younger wife,
Speaker 1: the sixteen year old kata Um gets historically blamed for
Speaker 1: creating this riff to think, in a lot of ways unfairly,
Speaker 1: she's also the one who saved the family business single handedly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in April, the Americans uh march into Hurts. Those
Speaker 1: tanks pull up in front of that factory and the soldiers,
Speaker 1: American soldiers are out there like kind of going over
Speaker 1: what they should do. Should we destroy this building or not.
Speaker 1: This is the place where the pondser shrucks were made. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Oddie's wife, kata comes out and she basically walks
Speaker 1: right up to these uh enemy soldiers and says, we
Speaker 1: only want to make shoes, We only desire to make shots.
Speaker 1: And they're like, why are you talking like Colonel Clint,
Speaker 1: and she said, we all do okay, uh, And that's
Speaker 1: basically like she convinced them to spare the factory. They
Speaker 1: did so. And not only that, the air the Air
Speaker 1: Force US Air Force set up operations there at their
Speaker 1: air base and realized that they really liked these shoes. Well,
Speaker 1: they found out that this was the company that made
Speaker 1: Jesse Owen's famous track shoes. Yeah, and so they went
Speaker 1: off the charts. They started getting these huge orders for
Speaker 1: sports teams, American sports teams because of this. So this
Speaker 1: is all going on. Um, it's all starting while Rudy's
Speaker 1: off in the pow camp because his brother rated him out,
Speaker 1: and the is this all of a sudden is starting
Speaker 1: to turn international like like like you said, people around
Speaker 1: the world are taking notice of this thanks to the
Speaker 1: American g i s who were coming back with this
Speaker 1: um gheta sportswear. Um. And when when Rudy comes back,
Speaker 1: it's done. His brothers rated him out. There was the
Speaker 1: whole thing in the bomb shelter, and the brothers split
Speaker 1: the company that they built together. They split, get Bruder,
Speaker 1: Tessler and or Dostler and they go off and found
Speaker 1: their own companies. Yeah, fifteen years after that bunker incident,
Speaker 1: so it was it took a long time to finally
Speaker 1: boil over. And in between there was another war. They
Speaker 1: were not good Nazis, we should point out, uh kind
Speaker 1: of you know, there were members of the Nazi Party
Speaker 1: and Rudy did get drafted. But like he said, he
Speaker 1: deserted his post a lot and they you know, they
Speaker 1: really did just want to sell shoes. Right, He's like
Speaker 1: Dwight Shrewts uncle or grandfather who spent a lot of
Speaker 1: the war in Allied pow camp. That's right. So, like
Speaker 1: you said, they split up the company. And we mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier that this river ran through the center of town,
Speaker 1: and I said significant, And it is significant because it
Speaker 1: literally divided the town and they set up their business.
Speaker 1: It's not like one of them said, well I'm going
Speaker 1: off to Berlin. They just set up camp on opposite
Speaker 1: sides of that river. Audi Dossler said, I will name
Speaker 1: my company Addids. Actually at first they named it odd Us.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, but everyone said that stinks. Well, no, that
Speaker 1: that was a different one. That one. There was a
Speaker 1: children's footwear line already called odd Us, so he added
Speaker 1: the eye and turned it into Adidas. Yeah, Rudy went
Speaker 1: with Ruda, and everyone said that no one's gonna buy
Speaker 1: is shoes named Ruda, especially in the United States. And
Speaker 1: he said, I don't understand, and they said, don't worry
Speaker 1: about it. So somehow he got Puma out of Ruda, right,
Speaker 1: which I don't get. But it's a name that's stuck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it works. Puma is definitely better than Ruda for sure.
Speaker 1: So these two go off and form directly competing companies
Speaker 1: that split from the same company that the brothers had
Speaker 1: founded together, and Adidas and Puma started making pretty good
Speaker 1: headway out of the gate at first. UM Rudy had
Speaker 1: the sales team, had the marketing team, had the the
Speaker 1: ability to to move some product. But ODDI had the
Speaker 1: technical know how, the dedication to making high quality footwear
Speaker 1: that athletes, like professional athletes, wanted to wear, and so
Speaker 1: he could get his shoes onto athletes who would wear
Speaker 1: them on the world stage. And eventually his his I
Speaker 1: guess his tack one out over his brothers and and
Speaker 1: from from a very early stage on, Adidas has always
Speaker 1: led Puma, at least as far as, like say, revenue goes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, there were mistakes from both of them
Speaker 1: along the way business wise. UM one of the big
Speaker 1: ones for Puma early on was that Rudolph got into
Speaker 1: a spat with a coach of the German national soccer team. Uh.
Speaker 1: And of course all that did was opened the door
Speaker 1: for his brother and Adidas to go in there and say,
Speaker 1: what about the shoes, which is exactly what happened. And
Speaker 1: so at the nineteen fifty four World Cup, Germany wears
Speaker 1: Adidas with those signature stripes, and even though they were
Speaker 1: not favored at all West Germany actually won against uh
Speaker 1: who Hungary, I believe, and that was a huge, huge
Speaker 1: deal on the national international stage. It was like the
Speaker 1: miracle on ice on grass. You mean they were stoned.
Speaker 1: They were all stoned out of their gods, the miracle
Speaker 1: on ice on grass. That that might have legs. My
Speaker 1: friend trademark that, well, I do officially right now, trademarked.
Speaker 1: I love it. So that was one mistake. Um. Adidas
Speaker 1: would of course go on to make some mistakes later.
Speaker 1: UM I know that that you sent that one article
Speaker 1: where they talked about how um they said, you know
Speaker 1: at one point that like yogging, no one's gonna do that,
Speaker 1: So we're not gonna make yogging shoes and aerobics. That's uh,
Speaker 1: that's a flash in the pan. Sure, who cares about
Speaker 1: physical fitness. So you mentioned Rebok earlier. It's hard for
Speaker 1: the young folks out there who are listening to to
Speaker 1: know this, but there was a time when Reebok was
Speaker 1: the name in sports apparel well plus all yeah, and Reebok.
Speaker 1: This article says that they lost their way at some point,
Speaker 1: But the way that Reebok kind of took the lead
Speaker 1: for a little while was saying, no, we'll get into jogging,
Speaker 1: we'll get into aerobics, and we'll make this stuff um
Speaker 1: at a time when Adidas and Puma were ignoring it.
Speaker 1: One of the other mistakes that both Adidas and Puma
Speaker 1: made was that they were so focused on beating one
Speaker 1: another they just completely dropped the ball as it were
Speaker 1: on the rise of Nike, and Nike was able to
Speaker 1: take over and apparently right out of the gate, and
Speaker 1: since then Nike has always been the leader in sports apparel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Adidas is two and pumas three. Right, Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 1: So you have an option these days. You can buy
Speaker 1: your sports apparel from a company that's been known to
Speaker 1: use child labor, or company that used forced French labor
Speaker 1: under the auspices of the Nazi Party in World War Two. Hooray,
Speaker 1: let's take a break. Yeah, we'll take a break, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about how this riff uh still oddly carries
Speaker 1: over in that town today and run dmc SK should
Speaker 1: know SK alright. So back in the day when they
Speaker 1: first split off this company and that river's running through
Speaker 1: this town, it was a really big deal. Uh. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just a sibling rivalry. It became a town wide rivalry.
Speaker 1: And that you you worked for one company or the
Speaker 1: other as a family, like husband and wife didn't work,
Speaker 1: they didn't split up, and one worked at Puma and
Speaker 1: one worked at Adidas. But plus, I mean, if you
Speaker 1: fell in love with somebody from a family across the
Speaker 1: river like you, that was sorry that you got a
Speaker 1: Romeo and Juliet thing going on. That ain't gonna work.
Speaker 1: Crazy it is, and I was glad that this. One
Speaker 1: of the local historians who was interviewed for one of
Speaker 1: these articles said, it wasn't like bloody or anything like
Speaker 1: someone lost their lives over this. It was just, you know,
Speaker 1: if you worked for Puma, you stayed on the Puma
Speaker 1: side of the river, If you worked for Adidas, you
Speaker 1: stayed on the Adida side of the river. And each
Speaker 1: each group kept to themselves. That was all. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it still carries over to this day. Um, some of
Speaker 1: those recent interviews that we both read, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: certainly now it's a little more good natured ribbing. But
Speaker 1: they say, when you walk around this town, walk through
Speaker 1: a playground and you see will you will see kids
Speaker 1: kid it out in all Adidas or all Puma. And
Speaker 1: this is carried down from generations where they were Adidas
Speaker 1: or Puma families, and it was it was a really
Speaker 1: big deal and still remains so to this day, such
Speaker 1: that the the mayor who actually came from a Puma family.
Speaker 1: But to be mayor, you can't, you know, you gotta
Speaker 1: be a politician. Sure, so he will wear to some events,
Speaker 1: casual events, Puma gear and sometimes Adidas gear. Eventually, in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, they had a friendly soccer match between
Speaker 1: the official Puma sponsored team and Adidas team, and he
Speaker 1: wore one Puma shoe and one Adidas shoe just to
Speaker 1: remain neutral, I guess, and to look like a total
Speaker 1: jackass probably so then it showed him rubbing like his
Speaker 1: Puma his Adidas foot. Later on they called him on camera.
Speaker 1: So this was, like you said, there was a soccer
Speaker 1: game that was played between Adidas and Puma, kind of
Speaker 1: a reconciliation thing on International Peace Day back and I
Speaker 1: think two thousand nine, um that happened. Think about this
Speaker 1: the the Rude, the Rudy and Audi Dostler died in
Speaker 1: the seventies within four years of each other. This was
Speaker 1: two thousand nine before the companies finally kind of had
Speaker 1: this um reconciliation game. And yeah, today still it's like
Speaker 1: you kind of will you'll gently, you know, make fun
Speaker 1: of somebody wearing Adidas if you're a Puma family or whatever.
Speaker 1: But while the brothers were alive, you just steered clear
Speaker 1: of everybody who was on the on the other side.
Speaker 1: And so much so that Hurtzo was known as the
Speaker 1: town of the lowered gaze, because if you came upon
Speaker 1: somebody on the street, you would look at their shoes
Speaker 1: to see what shoes they were wearing before you decided
Speaker 1: whether you're gonna talk to that. It was that it
Speaker 1: was that established this brother these brothers hatred and rivalry
Speaker 1: of one another, and they didn't speak for decades. Um
Speaker 1: spread out into the town that was divided by this river,
Speaker 1: and the town itself took sides because of this riff
Speaker 1: between these brothers that all started supposedly in this bomb
Speaker 1: shelter during World War two. Yeah, and the mayor Hacker
Speaker 1: his first name is German, could that be right. Uh,
Speaker 1: the journalists the German or the journalist is really lazy
Speaker 1: and didn't they were just like, it's a he's a
Speaker 1: German or just gonna call him that. I wonder if
Speaker 1: he pronounces that German that's whatever, or Herman because they
Speaker 1: don't say Germany over there anyway. But yeah, they say
Speaker 1: Deutsche linn. Yeah. But but would would it be Herman
Speaker 1: or no? I guess they spelled the herman's with an H. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it would be mayor German hakka right? Oh? Yeah.
Speaker 1: There is a nature German, Hacky Saka, who was on grass. Uh.
Speaker 1: But he says, if someone someone comes in through the
Speaker 1: door to this day, your gay still wanders to their shoes.
Speaker 1: It's just in the DNA of those people that this
Speaker 1: athletic gear is so important. It's so strange, such a cool, cool,
Speaker 1: weird story. It is a great story, um, of sibling
Speaker 1: rivalry and bitterness and hatred. And like you said, they
Speaker 1: didn't speak for decades apparently UM much later in life.
Speaker 1: There were a couple of times when they were a
Speaker 1: rumor to have spoken. Once. I think they ran into
Speaker 1: each other at an airport. Once they saw each other
Speaker 1: at a hotel uh and I believe on the deathbed,
Speaker 1: which one tried to get in touch with the other,
Speaker 1: Rudy Ruddy put out the call said I would like
Speaker 1: to see my brother Audi one more time, and Addi
Speaker 1: went no, thanks, I'm good nine. Can you believe it? Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: that's that's tough. So they died. The families sold the
Speaker 1: business in the eighties late eighties, and they got bought
Speaker 1: by UM like corporate conglomerates. Ironically, Puma now owns Reebok
Speaker 1: and Gucci owns Puma. Adidas is still just Adidas, but
Speaker 1: again it's it's owned by like a mega conglomerate UM
Speaker 1: and they just gone enormous and make billions of dollars
Speaker 1: a year. So the families aren't necessarily involved. But one
Speaker 1: family member still works in the business. His name is
Speaker 1: Frank Dossler. I believe he was Rudy's grandson and he
Speaker 1: used to work at Puma. He was pretty high up
Speaker 1: in Puma. Now he works as the head of the
Speaker 1: legal department for Adidas. It's a pretty good indication of
Speaker 1: how how much this Cold War is kind of thawed
Speaker 1: between the two companies quite a bit. Because the people
Speaker 1: who are running it have no in in the game.
Speaker 1: They don't they don't care anymore, you know. Yeah. Or
Speaker 1: he's an attorney and he would just after the most money, right,
Speaker 1: He's like, let me suck. So we have a fun
Speaker 1: little PostScript on this. I know we've been talking about
Speaker 1: run dmc uh and again you young inn's. It might
Speaker 1: be second nature now to associate athletic gear and hip
Speaker 1: hop and rap music and culture, but back in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen eighties that was not the case until run
Speaker 1: DMC came along. No, like your your rappers probably dressed
Speaker 1: like a Gonen King um or maybe like the New
Speaker 1: York Dolls, Yeah, or just like I mean sometimes I
Speaker 1: feel like I've seen just like denim jackets and just
Speaker 1: sort of like just sort of streetwear, which is the
Speaker 1: unhip thing I've ever said. It was pretty unhip. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to say any theme, so you know, play close.
Speaker 1: So run DMC changed everything when released a single called
Speaker 1: My Adidas and I saw elsewhere that they released a
Speaker 1: single My Adidas kind of in retaliation to a song
Speaker 1: called felon Shoes. So if you ever noticed that, um,
Speaker 1: run DMC wore their Adidas without laces with the tongues
Speaker 1: popped out. That was supposedly because that's how people in
Speaker 1: prison had to wear their shoes because they weren't allowed
Speaker 1: to have shoelaces, and they were kind of saying like,
Speaker 1: we're down with all of our buddies in prison. So
Speaker 1: this song Fell in Shoes basically was making fun of
Speaker 1: that and basically teaching kids not to not to emulate prisoners,
Speaker 1: and Run d m C took issue with that, and
Speaker 1: they ended up releasing My Adidas the song on Raising
Speaker 1: Hell in nine six. Sorry Raisin Hell. Yes, I remember
Speaker 1: my family was on a bust to Disney World once,
Speaker 1: I think in the windows were foggy and I was
Speaker 1: so into Run d m C. I just wrote Raisin
Speaker 1: Hell in the fog on the window. People on the
Speaker 1: bus thought that was really hilarious. Is a great story.
Speaker 1: So um, I was into my Adidas too because of
Speaker 1: Run d m C. But it wasn't just me. Apparently,
Speaker 1: if you went to a Run DMC show on the
Speaker 1: Raisin Hell Tour or the Together Forever Tour or eighty seven,
Speaker 1: when they sang my Adidas, everybody would take off their
Speaker 1: shoes and hold their Adidas in the air. That's how
Speaker 1: that's how big of an impact this song had. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And in six a senior employee Adidas named Angelo Anastasio
Speaker 1: went to that tour at Madison Square Garden saw this
Speaker 1: happen with the Adida sneakers and it was like, hold
Speaker 1: on a minute, wait just a second, we could have
Speaker 1: something here. Ran back to the headquarters and uh, within
Speaker 1: just a few days, they signed them to a million
Speaker 1: dollar endorsement deal. And that was like a sea change
Speaker 1: forward for hip hop groups getting money in all sorts
Speaker 1: of ways. Yeah, and apparently made Adidas's sales just go
Speaker 1: through the roof. Oh yeah, yeah. And it's like that
Speaker 1: began the marriage of like I'm gonna put out a record,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get a shoe deal, i might get a
Speaker 1: vodka sponsor, Like, oh yeah, I'll get money flown in
Speaker 1: from all kinds of directions and run DMC started it.
Speaker 1: All vodka's fonts or it's hilarious. Sure, I feel like
Speaker 1: I've seen that now. Oh yeah, you know you totally
Speaker 1: have like P Diddy and Si Rock vodka. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: look at works. I associate P Diddy and Rock vodka.
Speaker 1: Andrew's nodding, correct, awesome, Thanks Andrew, Jerry would have been like, what,
Speaker 1: I'm my miso is getting cold? Right, key, guys, hurry up?
Speaker 1: Uh we will hurry up, Ghost of Jerry. If you
Speaker 1: want to know anything else about Adidas and Puma, will
Speaker 1: just go start reading up more. There's actually a book
Speaker 1: by a woman named Barbara Smit called Sneaker Wars appropriately
Speaker 1: um all about the rift between Adidas and Puma. So
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about it, that's a
Speaker 1: pretty good place to start. And since I said that
Speaker 1: it's time for a listener mail, yeah, I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: this uh sponges. Hey, guys, I was listening to Pando
Speaker 1: and I was excited y'all mentioned glass sponges, which are
Speaker 1: thought to be the oldest animals on Earth. I am
Speaker 1: a PhD student at the Scripts Institution of Oceanography in
Speaker 1: San Diego, and I study marine sponges because they make
Speaker 1: all sorts of unique molecules that can be used as
Speaker 1: new medicines. I think sponges at the coolest animals on Earth,
Speaker 1: and I'd love to share some of my favorite sponge
Speaker 1: fun facts. Ready. Not only are sponges thought to be
Speaker 1: the oldest living, uh single living animals on Earth, but
Speaker 1: Some evolutionary biologists even think sponges were the first animals
Speaker 1: to ever evolve. In other words, are last common animal
Speaker 1: ancestor could very well have been a sponge. Did you
Speaker 1: know the first antiviral drug approved by the FDA was
Speaker 1: developed from a molecule in a c sponge. I didn't
Speaker 1: until just now as it PhD student. I collect and
Speaker 1: study sponges because they are known to produce thousands bioactive molecules,
Speaker 1: many of which have met a medicinal potential. I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty incredible that the ocean may hold the cure
Speaker 1: to some of the most devastating human diseases, and I
Speaker 1: hope my work might inspire people to protect the world's
Speaker 1: oceans and the valuable resources within them. Heck yeah, thanks
Speaker 1: for all the hard work you guys put into the show.
Speaker 1: Y'all have kept me company on many a long night
Speaker 1: in the lab with my sponges. That's awesome. It makes
Speaker 1: me want to go chew on a sponge and see
Speaker 1: what happened. That's right, that's from Kayla Wilson from San Diego.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Kayla, Thanks for the work you're doing too.
Speaker 1: Thank you for saving humanity from grave diseases. Yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: look into these sponges as you call them. If you
Speaker 1: want us to look into anything that we put in
Speaker 1: scare quotes, well we want to know about it. You
Speaker 1: can go onto our website, stuff you Should Know dot com,
Speaker 1: follow us on our social links. There you can get
Speaker 1: in touch with us. You can also send us a
Speaker 1: good old fashioned email, wrap it up, spank that thing
Speaker 1: on the bottom and send it off to Stuff podcast
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Yeah,