Shankar Vedantam

I think the deepest one is it's something in our biology.

So humans evolved for almost the entirety of human history in these small tribal communities.

And we're pretty flimsy creatures.

We don't have sharp teeth or poison or wings to fly away if a predator comes.

And so we survive by cooperating in groups and coalitions within those groups.

And so we have those same tendencies.

And then what you have in a modern environment that matters is that groups fill our need to belong.

You know, they help us gain status if we're part of a successful group.

And they also give us a sense of distinctiveness.

If our group is different from others, it tells us a little bit in the world about who we are.

So these brothers, it was World War II, 1943.

And the one brother, Addy, he and his wife climbed into the same shelter as his brother Rudolf's family.

And Addy said, according to legend, the dirty bastards are back again.

And we don't know if Addy was referring to the Allied war planes who were coming to bomb them, but Rudy apparently interpreted this as an insult intended for himself and his family.

And so it triggered this decades-long feud between these two brothers.

You know, they ended up breaking up their company and creating two shoe companies in the same town.

And that might have been the end of it, right?

But what happened is it infected the psychology of all the townspeople.

And so people on one side of the river of the town identified with Addie and the other side identified with the shoe company run by Rudy.

And it became known as the town of bent necks because people would walk around town looking down at the ground to see what shoes people were wearing.