This is Origin Stories, the Leaky Foundation podcast.

I'm Meredith Johnson.

The 2016 Euro Soccer Games ended just a few weeks ago.

And in case you weren't following it, Portugal beat France.

There's this video from that game that went viral.

In it, you see a guy who's crying because France just lost the finals.

And all of a sudden, a little boy comes up to him.

The boy is wearing a shirt for the Portuguese team.

It seems like they're strangers.

The boy notices the man is upset and touches his wrist.

And then they shake hands.

The boy pats the man on the back, and then the man gives the boy

this huge bear hug. It's like in an instant, this fan who is so upset is totally changed. He gives

the boy a thumbs up, and they walk away. If you follow Franz de Wall on Facebook,

you'll know that he watches videos like this too.

These things get extremely emotional.

You see all these fans hugging each other. Franz de Wall is a primatologist at Emory University.

For him, the kind of behavior you see with the sports fans in this video,

with the people hugging and consoling each other,

is actually a window into something else.

It's a way of looking at empathy. Empathy is that you're sensitive to the emotions

of others. You sometimes match them. So if someone is afraid, you're going to be afraid. If

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