Adidas v. Puma: A Sibling Rivalry

Oh oh oh, yes, I like that. You didn't know that because that means you don't go into Hooters. No, No, I've seen pictures on TV. 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 uh, it was on a stupid work trip. They made me go on and that was like the only place in town, and all these yokels that I worked with were like, yeah, man, let's go to Hooters. And I went in there and I was just like, my lord, what is They were

trapped in time. I've been there a couple of times. Actually when I was a younger, younger, man, it's the same, I imagine it is. I'm sure. And I was there on my twenty first birthday in Jacksonville because it was the only place open. It was like it's a Tuesday night or something, and I was like, this is this is not the best twenty first birthday all ever. Half yeah, and hey, we don't want to yuck your yum. If you're if you work at Hooters, or if you'd love

going there, more power to you. Sure, sure, right, that's pretty awesome that you said you don't want to yuck any once yung. Yeah, it's funny. I was thinking about a couple of weeks ago when uh, it was like the Castanza moment when he thought of a line after the moment when you were talking about how I was crazy for not liking olives, and I got onto you. I should have said, don't yum my yuck, 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 you're yum. I'm yucking you're yuck, which is different. You know, think about it, man, are you thinking about it. 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. It's pretty great life. We have pretty nice just soaking

in our own urine. God, don't you pee in your hyperbaric chamber? Yeah, but I mean that's how you're supposed to fill it up, right, 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, 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 their arrival brands founded by rival brothers, But I guarantee they don't know the full story behind the one of the most bitter family rivalries of all time that gave us Adidas and Puma. And it is extraordinarily fascinating. There's there's Nazis, there's run d m C. There's all this stuff all rolled into one and it turns out that this is it's one of the better

stories I ever come across. That's right. And before we dive into that awesome story to head off emails, I know I said hyperbolic inside of Hipperbarick. No such thing as a hyperbolic chamber could be. It's a chamber that It's like, I'm the biggest chamber ever probably, So all right, so let's this is a great story. And I had heard uh bits and pieces of this over the years, but it is interesting that Nazis and run DMC and feuding brothers all come together too. Because you know, my Pumas.

I've been a Puma guy for many, many years, even though I did have a pair of Adidas Superstars at one point, but they're too uh flashy. No, I liked them, but they were you know, white shoes aren't good on me. I get get them too dirty too quick. Yeah, So now I just vary my Pumas between the black and the black suede and sort of like the olive green swade usually. You know, Adidas makes non white shoes you could try. Yeah, but those classic white Superstars with the

three blue stripes, those, yeah, those are the ones. The shell toes. Yeah, well, I mean they have some other cool ones to like. Gazelles are pretty cool, like the the flat bottomed soccer shoe. And yeah, my my brother was in duw I've worked Gazelles for a while when I was a soccer poser. But my brother was into Stan Smiths. Oh yeah, those are cool too. I've got some 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 Well, I'm a Puma guy just because they look good on me and they're 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 Torrents. I never had Tree Torrents. It was a look. Oh, I know for sure I was. I was right after Tree Torns when I started getting his shoes case Swiss We're in. Yeah, I've never had

any of those. Uh. And then what was the other shoe? The the vans Um There's a particular style of Vans that I really still enjoy. The slip on ones with the black and white checks. No, those are cool, but I don't know if I can pull those off at seven. You could, but people will laugh at you behind your back. That's already happening. Uh yeah, I'll remember at some point. Okay, well, just shout it out. And plus, I just wanted to cover our basis by saying as many name brands as possible.

Don't forget British Nights, the b KS. Um, So Chuck, let's start the story, shall We were gonna have to get in the way back machine for this one, okay, and this is also full of urine, so that was you though. Let's let's let everybody know. Um, we're gonna 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. And I thought it was interesting that we're recording this now because we just acknowledged and recognized the UH one years removed from World War One. The end of World War One, Yeah, in the beginning of the Spanish flu that killed like three times as many people. Right after it. It's another celebration, right so so we're going back there. We're just going back a hundred days almost to the day. Yeah, and so that the name of that town is uh, well

I could have done at least that good Hurtzela. It's it's not exactly said that like that. Here, let's let's play this. That's how it said. Okay, okay, So so maybe we should just have that voice say of for use, but we're not going to it. Turns out the locals just called the town hurts So, sure, that's all we'll call it. But it's a little tiny village in Bavaria. They can't even pronounce it. No, they're like, we're not

even going to try. And we were born here. Don't don't be too hard on yourself, Josh, is what they're saying. Um so in Hurts. So it's a little town in Bavaria, little village. There's a river running through it, significantly. Yes. And in um around nineteen eighteen, one of the villagers who was born there, a guy named um Adolph desk Ler,

takes a seat in his mother's laundry. His mother ran a laundry out of out of their house, and he starts cobbling athletic shoes, specifically track shoes, I think, to

begin with, and he had a knack for it. Um, he started making shoes that athletes actually wanted pretty 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 was by far the more outgoing extrovert salesmany type of the of the two brothers, his older brother Rudolph, to start selling his shoes, start kind of creating a business operation out

of it. And I think within just a few years, um, they had twelve employees and they founded a company called Sports far Brick Gabrueder Dassler, which they called Ghetta for short. Yeah, so Gebruder is uh, you know for brothers. So Gebruda Dossler is the Dossler Brothers company. Um, And people were like, wow, so I don't have to wear my high heeled leather sport boot any longer, pitch, I don't have to tie

some sharp rocks to the bottom on my feet. Uh. So their nicknames you'll probably heres refer to them as uh Addie and Rudy, r U d I and uh you'll if you kind of put your head to it. You can see where this is headed. This is exciting. So uh, the laundry business wasn't going well. So like you said, little Addie started making these shoes and things

started going great. Um. And it turns out they made a pretty good team at first because they complimented one another, uh and what they were and what they were good at. So Addie was creative, uh and he was the brains and Rudy was a little more extroverted and he was a really good salesperson. Right, so they start to do a pretty good, pretty good business. Um. And it's 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 hurt So is like a shoemaking town, has a long tradition of shoemaking. And in for example, their population was thirty undred, but they had a hundred and twelve shoemakers. 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. Um, Addie 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 that one of these articles says looks like a ballet slipper with some nails coming out of the front of it, the front, bottom, the four soul and it was um it just changed everything. It was a genuinely great track shoe. At the time, they they people who were running sprinters who are running track, they didn't have any traction when

they were taking off. This gave them traction and just gave an immediate um lag up over the competition. And so the athletes like really really liked the shoes that they were putting out and the company 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 a German sprinter was wearing a pair of their track shoes and all he won was

a bronze medal. But he won a bronze medal, uh wearing the Dassler Brothers shoes and as a German sprinter exactly, so that should say at all it does. So he was wearing these track spikes and this this helped him.

This got him a little bit of notoriety, but it was really in Ni in Berlin at that very very famous Olympic Games, where a young athlete named Jesse Owens dominated and literally tore up the track wearing those uh Gibruda Dassler 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 vastly superior athlete to the rest of these jumps out here. Yeah. So um.

That was the Olympics that Jesse Owen's 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. Man slapt his little stash right off that lip. So um. The fact that Jesse Owens was wearing these shoes immediately brought international attention to ghet A,

the gi Brewer Um Dossler company. Um so they I saw one article that said, had World War two not happened, this this business would have just gone global immediately, and it started to. But then when World War two broke out, and that was the nineteen thirty six Olympics. I think I said the Olympics. It was I think that the nineteen thirty two Olympics that I talked about first. But

at the Olympics. Within just a couple of years, the Nazis invaded Poland, and uh, we're running Germany and World War two kicked off in earnest and the time for sports apparel kind of got derailed a little bit. Yeah. So, um, just like in the United States and and actually in countries all over the world, Uh, the war effort was. Uh, 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 gonna be good enough. It's like, no, we need to really co opt kind of any manufacturing that we want to to go toward the war effort. And certainly Germany did that along with the US and and kind of everyone else. Um, and everything from Hugo Boss to luft Hanza to these little shoemakers in this

small town in Bavaria. Yeah, they're they're factories were co opted for the war effort basically, and what the Dossler brother There's factory ended up making are something called the Ponza Shrek, which means the tank Terror, and it was modeled after the American Bazukah, which was one of the first shoulder mounted recoil lest rocket launchers that had enough power to punch right through a tank and blow up everybody inside. They were nasty little buggers. And the Ponza

Shrek was the German version of the bazuka. And the German version of the Bazuka was created in the Dossler Brothers shoe factory. Yeah, it's uh, December nineteen forty three is when they kind of made the full switch in these these little you know, German ladies who were so in shoes the week before were now manufacturing uh, German bazukash.

The good news is by this side because these things were really effective actually, and had they been um, had they been brought into the war sooner, thing 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 were steaming toward victory, and even though they started pumping out these bazukas, it was sort of too little, too late. Yeah, have you

ever wondered about the name bazuka, not until just now. Okay, well I did, and I was like, what does a bazooka 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, doesn't matter. He created a musical instrument out of brass called a bazuka, and um it was kind of like a trumpet and a trombone together. It was a weird little instrument, but he was popular enough that in the bazuka looked like

his instrument enough that it became called the bazuka. This this shoulder mounted rocket launcher. Interesting, I thought, so too, Sure why not? 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 their their

seamstresses welding bazukas together. They're also in their factory there was forced labor of French POWs, so they had slaves and the seamstresses working together to create bazukas. To take out the American tank divisions of the Allied tank divisions thanks to the companies that would eventually become Adidas and Puma. All Right, that's a great setup. 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, um, what went wrong with these two brothers right after this as skak 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. It was just too interesting to wait to talk about any longer. But we need to go back to about nineteen thirty three because, uh,

these brothers ended up fracturing in a big, big way. Um. And there have been, you know, some legendary sibling rivalries through the years, but this is this is really one of the greats uh. And I believe even Rudy wrote, as an older man, the relation to my brother was ideal from nineteen twenty four to nineteen thirty three. Then his young wife tried to interfere with business matters, although she, with her sixteen years, had no experience at all, and

the wall fapp again. So here's how the story goes, is it a nineteen thirty three Addie was uh, indeed married to a sixteen year old, which seems very creepy now, but back then it was not the strangest thing in the world. Slightly less creepy. Slightly less creepy. Well, they just it was a different time. 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 town house, which is not a great recipe for success anyway, right, You know, you need to have your own place. 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, um 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. So there was apparently am a series of just little things like that. But the as far as the family legend goes, the real break happened during World War Two when the Allies were bombing the juror the the village of Hurtzo and the Rudy and his wife made it made their way to the bunker, the bomb shelter, and shortly after that, Addie and his wife, I think her name was kata Um, they made their way into the bomb shelter and when they entered, he said, oh,

it looks like the bastards are here again. And Addie apparently went to his grave saying that he was referring to the Allied bombers. But Rudy took it that Addie was talking about Rudy and his wife, and apparently that was the final straw. Yeah, this was true evidence that things were really bad. If something is simple, possibly it's just a little misunderstanding of whether or not the bastards were the Allies bombing or you my brother and my sister in law, right, So I mean things were things

were pretty bad. If this is what did it? Right, So that 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

him drafted. And he can't get that 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 built with his brother Um. And then he gets arrested for desertion, and he's sure that his little brother read it him

out for desertion, and so he's arrested. He's held for a while, and as he's making his way back after the war to hurt So he gets picked up by the Allies for under suspicion of being a Gestapo agent. He's sure again this is a little brother ODDI who got him this time landed in a e OW camp that he stays in for a little while. And it

turns out he was right. There is documentary evidence from an American officer who took the accusation down, and apparently it was Addie who went to the Americans and said, my brother is a Gesta. You may want to arrest him. Jerk. This is the level of stuff these brothers are doing to one another. Um, and the riff just kept getting

bigger and bigger and bigger. There's one other thing we have to say, because uh, the wife, the younger wife, the sixteen year old kata Um gets historically blamed for creating this riff to think, in a lot of ways unfairly, she's also the one who saved the family business single handedly. Yeah. So in April, the Americans uh march into Hurts. 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. This is the place where the pondser shrucks were made. Yeah. So Oddie's wife, kata comes out and she basically walks right up to these uh enemy soldiers and says, we only want to make shoes, We only desire to make shots. And they're like, why are you talking like Colonel Clint, and she said, we all do okay, uh, And that's basically like she convinced them to spare the factory. They

did so. And not only that, the air the Air Force US Air Force set up operations there at their air base and realized that they really liked these shoes. Well, they found out that this was the company that made Jesse Owen's famous track shoes. Yeah, and so they went off the charts. They started getting these huge orders for sports teams, American sports teams because of this. So this

is all going on. Um, it's all starting while Rudy's off in the pow camp because his brother rated him out, and the is this all of a sudden is starting to turn international like like like you said, people around the world are taking notice of this thanks to the American g i s who were coming back with this um gheta sportswear. Um. And when when Rudy comes back, it's done. His brothers rated him out. There was the whole thing in the bomb shelter, and the brothers split

the company that they built together. They split, get Bruder, Tessler and or Dostler and they go off and found their own companies. Yeah, fifteen years after that bunker incident, so it was it took a long time to finally boil over. And in between there was another war. They were not good Nazis, we should point out, uh kind of you know, there 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. Right, He's like Dwight Shrewts uncle or grandfather who spent a lot of the war in Allied pow camp. 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. They just set up camp on opposite

sides of that river. Audi Dossler said, I will name my company Addids. Actually at first they named it odd Us. Well yeah, but everyone said that stinks. Well, no, that that was a different one. That one. There was a children's footwear line already called odd Us, so he added the eye and turned it into Adidas. Yeah, Rudy went with Ruda, and everyone said that no one's gonna buy is 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. Yeah, and it works. Puma is definitely better than Ruda for sure. 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 at first. UM Rudy had the sales team, had the marketing team, had the the

ability to to move some product. But ODDI 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 tack one out over his brothers and and from from a very early stage on, Adidas has always led Puma, at least as far as, like say, revenue goes. Yeah, and you know, there were mistakes from both of them

along the way business wise. UM 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. Uh. And of course all that did was opened the door for his brother and Adidas to go in there and 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 uh who Hungary, I believe, and that was a huge, huge deal on the national international stage. It was like the miracle on ice on grass. You mean they were stoned. They were all stoned out of their gods, the miracle

on ice on grass. That that might have legs. My friend trademark that, well, I do officially right now, trademarked. I love it. So that was one mistake. Um. Adidas would of course go on to make some mistakes later. UM I know that that you sent that one article where they talked about how um they said, you know at one point that like yogging, no one's gonna do that, So we're not gonna make yogging shoes and aerobics. That's uh, that's a flash in the pan. Sure, who cares about

physical fitness. So you mentioned Rebok earlier. It's hard for the young folks out there who are listening to to know this, but there was a time when Reebok was the name in sports apparel well plus all yeah, and 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 was saying, no, we'll get into jogging, we'll get into aerobics, and we'll make this stuff um at a time when Adidas and Puma were ignoring it.

One of the other mistakes that both Adidas and Puma made was that they were so focused on beating one another they just completely dropped the ball as it were on the rise of Nike, and Nike was able to take over and apparently right out of the gate, and since then Nike has always been the leader in sports apparel. Yeah, and Adidas is two and pumas three. Right, Yeah, amazing.

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. Yeah, we'll take a break, and we'll talk about how this riff uh still oddly carries over in that town today and run dmc SK should know SK alright. 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. Uh. It wasn't just a sibling rivalry. It became a town wide rivalry. And that you you worked for one company or the other as a family, like husband and wife didn't work, they didn't split up, and one worked at Puma and one worked at Adidas. But plus, I mean, if you fell in love with somebody from a family across the river like you, that was sorry that you got a Romeo and Juliet thing going on. That ain't gonna work.

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 someone lost their lives over this. It was just, you know, if you 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. Yeah, And

it still carries over to this day. Um, 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

kid it out in all Adidas or all Puma. And this is carried down from generations where they were Adidas or Puma families, and it was it was a really big deal and still remains so to this day, such that the the mayor who actually came from a Puma family. But to be mayor, you can't, you know, you gotta be a politician. Sure, so he will wear to some events,

casual events, Puma gear and sometimes Adidas gear. Eventually, in two thousand nine, they had a friendly soccer match between the official Puma sponsored team and Adidas team, and he wore one Puma shoe and one Adidas shoe just to remain neutral, I guess, and to look like a total jackass probably so then it showed him rubbing like his Puma his Adidas foot. Later on they called him on camera.

So this was, 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 and I think two thousand nine, um that happened. Think about this the the Rude, the Rudy and Audi Dostler died in the seventies within four years of each other. This was two thousand nine before the companies finally kind of had

this um reconciliation game. And yeah, today still it's like you kind of will 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. And so much so that Hurtzo was known as the town of the lowered gaze, 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 gonna talk to that. It was that it was that established this brother these brothers hatred and rivalry of one another, and they didn't speak for decades. Um spread out into the town that was divided by this river, and the town itself took sides because of this riff between these brothers that all started supposedly in this bomb shelter during World War two. Yeah, and the mayor Hacker

his first name is German, could that be right. Uh, the journalists the German or the journalist is really lazy and didn't they were just like, it's a he's a German or just gonna call him that. I wonder if he pronounces that German that's whatever, or Herman because they don't say Germany over there anyway. But yeah, they say Deutsche linn. Yeah. But but would would it be Herman or no? I guess they spelled the herman's with an H. Yeah, I think it would be mayor German hakka right? Oh? Yeah.

There is a nature German, Hacky Saka, who was on grass. Uh. 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, such a cool, cool, weird story. It is a great story, um, of sibling rivalry and bitterness and hatred. And like you said, they didn't speak for decades apparently UM much later in life. There were a couple of times when they were a

rumor to have spoken. Once. I think they ran into each other at an airport. Once they saw each other at a hotel uh and I believe on the deathbed, which one tried to get in touch with the other, Rudy Ruddy put out the call said I would like to see my brother Audi one more time, and Addi went no, thanks, I'm good nine. Can you believe it? Yeah, man, that's that's tough. So they died. The families sold the business in the eighties late eighties, and they got bought

by UM like corporate conglomerates. Ironically, Puma now owns Reebok and Gucci owns Puma. Adidas is still just Adidas, but again it's it's owned by like a mega conglomerate UM and they 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 high up in Puma. Now he works as the head of the

legal department for Adidas. 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 in in the game. They don't they don't care anymore, you know. Yeah. Or he's an attorney and he would just after the most money, right, He's like, let me suck. So we have a fun little PostScript on this. I know we've been talking about

run dmc uh and again you young inn'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. No, like your your rappers probably dressed like a Gonen King um or maybe 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

unhip thing I've ever said. It was pretty unhip. I didn't want to say any theme, so you know, play close. So run DMC changed everything when released a single called My Adidas and I saw elsewhere that they released a single My Adidas kind of in retaliation to a song called felon Shoes. So if you ever noticed that, um, run DMC wore their Adidas without laces with the tongues

popped out. 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. So this song Fell in Shoes basically was making fun of that and basically teaching kids not to not to emulate prisoners, and Run d m C took issue with that, and they ended up releasing My Adidas the song on Raising

Hell in nine six. Sorry Raisin Hell. Yes, I remember my family was on a bust to Disney World once, I think in the windows were foggy and I was so into Run d m C. I just wrote Raisin Hell in the fog on the window. People on the bus thought that was really hilarious. Is a great story. So um, I was into my Adidas too because of

Run d m C. 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 or eighty seven, when they sang my Adidas, everybody would take off their shoes and hold their Adidas in the air. That's how

that's how big of an impact this song had. Yeah, And in 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 and uh, 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. Yeah, and apparently made Adidas's sales just go through the roof. Oh yeah, yeah. And it's like that began the marriage of like I'm gonna put out a record, I'm gonna get a shoe deal, i might get a vodka sponsor, Like, oh yeah, I'll get money flown in from all kinds of directions and run DMC started it. All vodka's fonts or it's hilarious. Sure, I feel like I've seen that now. Oh yeah, you know you totally have like P Diddy and Si Rock vodka. I think, yeah,

look at works. I associate P Diddy and Rock vodka. Andrew's nodding, correct, awesome, Thanks Andrew, Jerry would have been like, what, I'm my miso is getting cold? Right, key, guys, hurry up? Uh we will hurry up, Ghost of Jerry. If you want to know anything else about Adidas and Puma, will just go start reading up more. There's actually a book by a woman named Barbara Smit called Sneaker Wars appropriately

um 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 for a listener mail, yeah, I'm gonna call this uh sponges. 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 can be used as new medicines. I think sponges at the coolest animals on Earth, and I'd love to share some of my favorite sponge

fun facts. Ready. Not only are sponges thought to be the oldest living, uh single living animals on Earth, but Some evolutionary biologists even think sponges were the first animals to ever evolve. In other words, are last common animal ancestor could very well have been a sponge. Did you know the first antiviral drug approved by the FDA was developed from a molecule in a c sponge. I didn't

until just now as it PhD student. I collect and study sponges because they are known to produce thousands bioactive molecules, many of which have met a 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. Heck yeah, thanks for all the hard work you guys put into the show.

Y'all have kept me company on many a long night in the lab with my sponges. That's awesome. It makes me want to go chew on a sponge and see what happened. That's right, that's from Kayla Wilson from San Diego. Thanks a lot, Kayla, Thanks for the work you're doing too. Thank you for saving humanity from grave diseases. Yeah, we'll look into these sponges as you call them. 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 you Should 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 how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. Yeah,