Athletes and advertising seems so synonymous these days that it can be hard to imagine a time when the two didn't go hand in hand. But everything has to start somewhere. And in this case it all started with a small German shoe company that grew into the global corporate megaliths Adidas and Puma. The inner-family grudge that divided the original company in two may have started with brothers Adi and Rudolf Dassler, but it came to its existential conclusion with their sons: Horst and Armin. Be...

Nowadays, the shoe game may have reached unprecedented heights. But modern sneaker heads might gasp at the realization that the options for dripped-out kicks were, at one point, severely limited. In the mid-twentieth century, between World Wars, even metal cleats on a futbol boot were an unfathomable innovation. That was until brothers Rudolf and Adi Dassler founded a company that, through a combination of athletic competitiveness, sibling rivalry and genuine paranoia, split into two titans...

Long before Marvel and DC started digging through their archives for whatever semi-recognizable spandex-clad heroes they could squeeze into FunkPop form, the people saving the day in Hollywood were just that: people. Everyday ordinary joes, off-duty cops, and cooks who were really former Navy SEALs in disguise. Back in the 80s and 90s, when blockbusters were all about bazookas and brawn, some of the biggest movie stars in the world were guys who looked good in a bloodstained tank-top. Steven...

Sexual imagery and erotic content are nothing new. Whether for artistic enjoyment or pure carnal pleasure, humans have been obsessed with watching each other "do it" since the dawn of time. But the forms this has taken in the public sphere have transformed greatly. Nowadays, with the advent of the internet, Western society seems to take the almost ubiquitous nature of pornography for granted. But in the mid-twentieth century, magazines like Playboy and Penthouse weren't just publishing nude...

Pirates have long fascinated us as a society and have been a cultural touchstone for anyone who dreams of a life free of rules and full of high adventure. But the reality of life as a 17th century buccaneer in the Caribbean was far harsher and much bloodier than most popular fiction depicts. There is one swashbuckler who cheated death time and time again, though, in addition to foiling the Spanish Empire's attempts to maintain a stranglehold on the riches of "the New World." His name was...

Whether you're a lifelong fan or just a casual observer of the cultural zeitgeist, there's a good chance professional wrestling has entered your orbit in some capacity. There's an undeniable appeal to seeing enormously muscular men and women fly at each other from the top ropes to deliver a precision flip kick that actually does little harm to either party involved. The overblown theatricality of the "backstage" storylines and larger-than-life characters also creates an atmosphere of sincere...

Soul music is a wholly unique genre that evolved out of many areas of African American cultural heritage and tradition. It may have taken years for white audiences to grow accustom to eventually appreciate it. But soul music also produced some of the most widely-beloved and iconic artists of the 1950s, 60s and beyond, not the least of which was the Mr. Dynamite: James Brown. Yet while Brown may have dubbed himself the "hardest working man in show business," he was not the only performer with...

Advice columns have been a part of our culture for almost as long as there have been newspapers to print them. People of all backgrounds have turned, anonymously to these sources of cultural wisdom for help with all manner of personal issues. There have been few advice dealers more prominent than Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren a.k.a. Dear Abby, In the latter half of the 20th century, they were two of the most influential columnists in the word. But what you might not know about them is...

BEEF is an original scripted non-fiction storytelling podcast where Business Wars meets pop culture history. Award-winning host Bridget Todd tells the stories of legends in their fields and how they tried to stomp out their competition only to find that their enemies become the driving force behind their success, ultimately changing the world as we know it. Subscribe, rate & review the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or your app of choice. Follow Next...