Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
Speaker 1: and Jerry's here too, so this is stuff you should know.
Speaker 2: Oft requested edition. I knew someone had asked for this,
Speaker 2: so I did a little Google or not Google, but
Speaker 2: an email search, and seven people requested this over the
Speaker 2: last four years.
Speaker 1: What are their names?
Speaker 2: Shannon Mendonka, Megan Delfino, Josh Cronin, come on down, Michelle Roberts,
Speaker 2: Alec Cole, Jonathan, Mark Wan or Mark Vin can't remoone writing?
Speaker 2: And then Micah p Micah. I don't know how to
Speaker 2: pronounce your name, p e g u e s p
Speaker 2: at you. I'm sure there's a pronounce pegoose. I'm in
Speaker 2: a m couldee my old buddy. I think Michael was
Speaker 2: the first one, dating back to twenty twenty, or at
Speaker 2: least as far as my email went back to search
Speaker 2: for doctor Bronner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's who we're talking about, doctor Broner. And if
Speaker 1: you're like that name sounds familiar, you might be familiar
Speaker 1: with Doctor Broner's eighteen and one Magic Soap, which Doctor
Speaker 1: Broner the company has been selling since at least the
Speaker 1: nineteen forties. And if you just said what I've only
Speaker 1: known that since the sixties, or the seventies, or the eighties,
Speaker 1: or the nineties or two years ago, It's true. This
Speaker 1: stuff has been around for a very long time. And
Speaker 1: doctor Broner himself is enough of a character to warrant
Speaker 1: an episode. We're not really talking about the soap today, no.
Speaker 2: But one thing you probably have, there's no way you
Speaker 2: cannot notice it is the iconic labels on the soap,
Speaker 2: which have twenty seven hundred and twenty nine words printed
Speaker 2: in five point font making up what we'll talk about later,
Speaker 2: the moral ABC and we'll get to why all that happened.
Speaker 2: But it's a unique company in a couple of ways,
Speaker 2: and many many ways. But one is they have never
Speaker 2: spent money on advertising. That's amazing, not a penny. And
Speaker 2: it started out as a well, we'll get to the origins,
Speaker 2: but now it's it's one of the top selling organic
Speaker 2: soaps on the market, with revenues approaching two hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it went through quite a circuitous route to
Speaker 1: get there, because not very long ago you bought that
Speaker 1: at like your local health food store that smelled like,
Speaker 1: you know, Valerian root everywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, incense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they've just kind of blown up. And what's
Speaker 1: neat is they they've continued to grow under successive generations.
Speaker 1: So I say we talk about doctor Brauner and where
Speaker 1: he came from in the first place.
Speaker 2: All right, if you like you said, if you look
Speaker 2: at the label, it will say family soap makers since
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty eight, and that is when the Heilbranna family
Speaker 2: in Germany started making soap. They were a Jewish family
Speaker 2: in Laupiem, Germany, and the doctor Barner himself would later
Speaker 2: drop the hile part of his name because of obvious
Speaker 2: reasons in World War Two. But in the eighteen nineties
Speaker 2: the heil Branos were making tons of soap in three
Speaker 2: factories in Germany. He came from a very well healed,
Speaker 2: kind of legendary soap Casteel soap making company.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say he was trained by his
Speaker 1: family to make casteel soap, which is kind of soap
Speaker 1: made originated I guess around maybe the Mediterranean that uses
Speaker 1: vegetable oils instead of animal fats, and it's softer and
Speaker 1: it does less drying on the skin, and it's a
Speaker 1: true soap. It undergoes to ponification. It's not a detergent
Speaker 1: like a lot of other soaps. It's a genuine, true soap.
Speaker 1: And he learned to make that back in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds. He was born in nineteen oh eight, so
Speaker 1: sometime after that he learned how to make Kessial soap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was born Emil E. M I l Heilbroner.
Speaker 2: Like we said, that's the less obnoxious way to say it.
Speaker 1: I like how you've been saying. I was going to
Speaker 1: compliment you, honestly, Alblanna.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he you know, in Germany and a lot of
Speaker 2: well a lot of people that are a lot of
Speaker 2: places that have the sort of apprentice model. That's what
Speaker 2: he did. He was an apprentice and then a journeyman,
Speaker 2: and then eventually he was a master soap maker. Only
Speaker 2: formal education he received was that the doctor was self
Speaker 2: bestowed and completely made up.
Speaker 1: And that totally fits him, as we'll see absolutely.
Speaker 2: But he and his parents were at odds. His wealthy
Speaker 2: family were more just sort of old school, politically orthodox
Speaker 2: Jewish family. They didn't want radical politics in their house,
Speaker 2: and so Emial's belief in national homeland for the Jewish
Speaker 2: people in Zionism did not jibe with what his family
Speaker 2: wanted to do, so they basically said, hey, enough of that,
Speaker 2: or get the heck out of here. So in nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty nine, in December of that year, Emil went to
Speaker 2: the United States.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at age twenty one, and he went essentially like
Speaker 1: without a plan, without much money. He just showed up
Speaker 1: in New York City. And he chose a particularly terrible
Speaker 1: time where I should say his father chose a particularly
Speaker 1: terrible time. Showed up just after the stock market crash
Speaker 1: of nineteen twenty nine that kicked off the Great Depression.
Speaker 1: So he immediately found trouble or found getting work troublesome.
Speaker 1: He did manage to kind of keep himself afloat by
Speaker 1: making soap or teaching others how to make soap, and
Speaker 1: he's routinely considered a genius. There's a I think either
Speaker 1: a police report or a mental institution poured on him
Speaker 1: that says he very clearly seems to have a wealth
Speaker 1: of scientific knowledge in his head. So he knew what
Speaker 1: he was doing with chemistry, even though, like you said,
Speaker 1: his only formal education was in soap. Making. He understood
Speaker 1: the chemistry of the whole thing and what adding this
Speaker 1: to it or that to it, what changes that would have,
Speaker 1: So he was able to kind of keep himself going
Speaker 1: through soap making for essentially his whole life starting about now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he got married nineteen thirty to another German immigrant
Speaker 2: named Paula Voldefought. She has an interesting backstory and tragic
Speaker 2: in that she was born from an affair between a
Speaker 2: Catholic priest and a nun, and that nun very sadly
Speaker 2: took her life and put I don't know if it
Speaker 2: was she put her up for adoption before or if
Speaker 2: that de facto put her up for adoption, but either way,
Speaker 2: the nun took her life. Paula was adopted. Obviously wasn't Jewish,
Speaker 2: which would not endear herself to Emil's family as you know,
Speaker 2: as well as Emil himself. And in nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 2: Emil made his first batch of peppermint oil soap, which
Speaker 2: today is their biggest seller. Sill as a diaper cleaner.
Speaker 2: When they had cloth diapers, it was a diaper sanitizer,
Speaker 2: and hey, my god, can you make this smell any better?
Speaker 2: Kind of product?
Speaker 1: So in nineteen thirty six, he became a naturalized citizen
Speaker 1: and this is when he changed his name from Emil
Speaker 1: Heil Brauner to Emmanuel Theodore Brauner. And most people call
Speaker 1: him doctor E. H. Brauner. Again, he's not a doctor.
Speaker 1: He just decided to call himself a doctor. Although people
Speaker 1: cite his master chemist status as a soap maker to
Speaker 1: at least, you know, kind of justify it all. But
Speaker 1: there's no getting around the fact that he bestowed the
Speaker 1: doctor on himself. And they think that the H and
Speaker 1: eh is kind of a nod to the hile from
Speaker 1: heil Bronner that he dropped. Okay, but that's not me.
Speaker 1: I'm not making that up.
Speaker 2: Previous to World War Two, he was doing okay, he
Speaker 2: was making soap, doing pretty well. He had his wife,
Speaker 2: he had his family. What do you have? Three kids?
Speaker 2: Is that right? Two boys and a girl. After the war,
Speaker 2: everything had fallen apart for him in his life. Basically,
Speaker 2: Hitler of course, came into power. He and his siblings
Speaker 2: were begging his parents to leave Germany, which they would
Speaker 2: not do. And you know, the worst thing happened that
Speaker 2: they were afraid of. They were forced to hand over
Speaker 2: their business. They were sent to concentration camps and they
Speaker 2: were both killed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I was reading a blog post from Lisa Broner,
Speaker 1: who's doctor Broner's granddaughter, and she was explaining that they
Speaker 1: there was a forced sale of their soap making business
Speaker 1: to the Third Reich, to the German state because they
Speaker 1: were Jewish, they were not allowed to own businesses like that,
Speaker 1: and that would be obviously like a clear signal everybody
Speaker 1: like probably should leave the country now. But the Germans
Speaker 1: also at this time had a law that well healed,
Speaker 1: Jewish people could not leave Germany with capital. You could leave,
Speaker 1: but you could not take a penny of German money
Speaker 1: outside of the country with you. And so if you
Speaker 1: were wealthy and Jewish, it would be kind of tough
Speaker 1: to just be like, you know what, forget it, my
Speaker 1: entire family fortune. I'm just gonna forget about it just
Speaker 1: to get out of Germany, because I still don't think
Speaker 1: like the German people are so crazy that they're going
Speaker 1: to let this guy just keep going. And it got
Speaker 1: to the point where it became too late. And there's
Speaker 1: a part of family lore is that doctor Brauner got
Speaker 1: a last postcard from his father after his detention in
Speaker 1: the concentration camp, and it says, like everything else is redacted,
Speaker 1: but at the very end it says you were right,
Speaker 1: your loving father, which is that's about as heartbreaking as
Speaker 1: it gets. But that was a big, big deal to
Speaker 1: doctor Brauner, as his sister would later attest.
Speaker 2: Oh, of course, another tragedy and big deal in his
Speaker 2: life is when his wife suffered a fall after they
Speaker 2: had their third kid, and that was kind of it
Speaker 2: for her. She became depressed, she stopped eating, she had
Speaker 2: suicidal ideation. Eventually died in a state mental hospital outside
Speaker 2: of Chicago. And I tried to find out more and
Speaker 2: more about maybe what happened with her, and there's just
Speaker 2: not a lot out there. I suspect that maybe there
Speaker 2: was some sort of head injury. It just sort of
Speaker 2: tracks along those lines maybe in that fall. But either way,
Speaker 2: he was left a widower with three young children, and
Speaker 2: as we'll see, was not much of a dad. He
Speaker 2: was not around much and did not dad much.
Speaker 1: No, No, there's one thing that everybody agrees is that
Speaker 1: he was a terrible father in almost every way, not always,
Speaker 1: but almost every way, especially on paper, like when you
Speaker 1: just read about how what kind of father he was
Speaker 1: it's crazy that his kids ever, you know, embraced him
Speaker 1: or stuck around with him.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, well, I mean we might as well
Speaker 2: go ahead and talk about it. I believe that they
Speaker 2: were at various times in orphanages and placed with other families,
Speaker 2: and he kind of straight up said, and you know,
Speaker 2: as we'll see, he becomes a bit of a zelot
Speaker 2: for his ideas and kind of a kind of a
Speaker 2: manic street preacher type. And he would literally say, like,
Speaker 2: who has time to parent kids when I have to
Speaker 2: like spread spread my word around. And he made no
Speaker 2: bones about it, you know, that just he wasn't going
Speaker 2: to parent these kids.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, And he would come back once or twice
Speaker 1: a year and visit them, but yeah, he was like,
Speaker 1: I have to go out and do this. I have
Speaker 1: a much bigger mission than raising you kids. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a really tough thing to swallow, I'm sure as
Speaker 1: you're a kid, and then even as an adult when
Speaker 1: you're looking back. But again, astoundingly, his kids stuck with
Speaker 1: him and learned to just kind of deal with the
Speaker 1: fact that their father had abandoned them in about the
Speaker 1: most overt way a father can abandon a child and
Speaker 1: spent the rest of their lives with him once they
Speaker 1: grew up and were able to basically get out of
Speaker 1: the foster and orphanage systems.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, so mentioned him being, you know, having these
Speaker 2: big ideas. I mentioned the moral ABC and kind of
Speaker 2: like the manic street preacher shout out to the band.
Speaker 2: This all came from this idea of post World War two.
Speaker 2: He had sort of a either a breakthrough or a
Speaker 2: breakdown in his mind about that this could be it.
Speaker 2: We're on the brink of destruction as a people. Mankind
Speaker 2: needs a big shift in our perspectives, how we think
Speaker 2: about politics, how we think about our time on earth
Speaker 2: in the afterlife. He basically was like, the only way
Speaker 2: forward for us, if we're going to survive as a species,
Speaker 2: is to become the United States of the world and
Speaker 2: to be all together as one people. And you know,
Speaker 2: it wasn't the most radical idea. There have been plenty
Speaker 2: of people that talked about stuff like this, but he's like,
Speaker 2: we are all children of the same God, and the
Speaker 2: only thing that can save us from that is if
Speaker 2: we all get together and come together as one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm glad you said that he either had a
Speaker 1: breakthrough or breakdown because his sister Louise, who will play
Speaker 1: a big role in a minute. She traces the origin
Speaker 1: of his zealousness and his need to like spread this
Speaker 1: message to the time when both of his parents were
Speaker 1: killed murdered and his wife died like all within basically
Speaker 1: a year, and that he changed after that. And depending
Speaker 1: on who you talk to and how you look at it,
Speaker 1: he changed either for the better and like became the
Speaker 1: person who was supposed to be or his ideas were
Speaker 1: just super kookie and he managed to support himself just
Speaker 1: by the grace of making soap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I mentioned the moral ABC. This is basically
Speaker 2: the end result of his sort of an end result,
Speaker 2: meaning it was still a work in progress to the
Speaker 2: day died. He was always tinkering with his moral ABC,
Speaker 2: which is the thing printed on that soap label. All
Speaker 2: one is the big rallying cry, which is what I
Speaker 2: was kind of alluding to earlier with his thoughts. But
Speaker 2: that is what he I mean to secondary to selling soap.
Speaker 2: He was worried about this label and the words on it.
Speaker 2: It's seemingly his entire life until he died.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he figured out that he could use the soap
Speaker 1: as a way to get the word out there, which
Speaker 1: is pretty genius actually, and that's where the label came from.
Speaker 2: Did we take a break, all right?
Speaker 1: Okay, Chuck. So after some period of time, he ended
Speaker 1: up in Chicago, and like you said, he became a
Speaker 1: manic street preacher in Chicago and he attracted an adherent
Speaker 1: This is this is kind of like a little side story,
Speaker 1: but it's worth telling because I think it really kind
Speaker 1: of gets the point across about Brauner and who he
Speaker 1: was and the people he hung out with at the time,
Speaker 1: because he came out as like the reasonable one out
Speaker 1: of this one. But one of his devotees was named
Speaker 1: fred Walker, who he had attracted, and Fred Walker Poker
Speaker 1: he would turn out to be a Nazi sympathizer, but
Speaker 1: before that was clear, he was an Austrian immigrant who
Speaker 1: had created his own universal brotherhood movement called American Industrial Democracy,
Speaker 1: and he really was vibing on what Brauner was saying.
Speaker 1: And at some point, I guess either he or they,
Speaker 1: it's not clear, got the idea of creating a publicity
Speaker 1: stunt to get their ideas out there to more people,
Speaker 1: and apparently Fred Walker submitted or suggested that he be
Speaker 1: crucified to get this message out as a publicity stunt,
Speaker 1: and he was crucified.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This is in outside of El Station, a train
Speaker 2: station in Chicago, March ninth, nineteen forty five. Cops were
Speaker 2: called down there and like dude on a cross with
Speaker 2: nails the whole nine yards. It wasn't like a show,
Speaker 2: and he was tied up there. It was a real
Speaker 2: crucifixion that he survived. At some point mentioned Bronner's name
Speaker 2: and the cops went and talked to Bronner and said, hey,
Speaker 2: do you have I think he mentioned the peace Plan
Speaker 2: or something like that. Walker did to the cops and
Speaker 2: they said, are you a Bronner And they said yeah,
Speaker 2: and he said do you have this a peace plan?
Speaker 2: He went, sure, I do, and even have a pamphlet.
Speaker 2: They're like, well, why don't you come talk to us
Speaker 2: then about what happened to your friend? Nothing ever happened.
Speaker 2: I guess everyone just clammed up about how he was
Speaker 2: actually literally crucified. But in the hospital room with like
Speaker 2: reporters and everything in there with this guy, Bronner was
Speaker 2: in there with his peace pamphlets like passing them out
Speaker 2: to people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but apparently people were like, this is not the
Speaker 1: kind of thing I want to associate with crucifixion, you know,
Speaker 1: like I now think that your ideas are related to
Speaker 1: this man being crucified in Chicago. So it wasn't the
Speaker 1: best publicity stunt of all time, but it does kind
Speaker 1: of get across the kind of stuff and the kind
Speaker 1: of people that doctor Broner was hanging out with in
Speaker 1: Chicago in the mid forties, And he developed a reputation
Speaker 1: pretty quickly because within a year he was arrested by
Speaker 1: the Chicago police and his life completely changed. At this point,
Speaker 1: he was known for not taking no as an answer.
Speaker 1: He was known for not knowing the meaning of the
Speaker 1: word can't again. Lisa Broner described him. And there was
Speaker 1: the International Center, a college at the University of Chicago.
Speaker 1: They would have like seminars or presentations or lectures, and
Speaker 1: doctor Broner is like, I've got a perfect lecture for
Speaker 1: you guys. Let me get up there and talk and
Speaker 1: tell everybody my all one sermon and that moral ABC
Speaker 1: And they said, no, we don't want you to do that.
Speaker 1: Thanks for offering, And the University of Chicago thought that
Speaker 1: was that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So in March of forty six, he comes back
Speaker 2: pretty hot headed. He's yelling out his fellowsipes, he's kind
Speaker 2: of yelling out his moral ABC and a couple of
Speaker 2: cops come out and say, hey, your car's parked illegally
Speaker 2: out there. Why don't you come out with us and
Speaker 2: we'll get it moved. And I guess this was just
Speaker 2: the old cop thing to not cause a big scene inside,
Speaker 2: because they get him outside, immediately arrest him, hit.
Speaker 1: Him with a blackjack.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's in jail for about a week, and his
Speaker 2: sister Louise eventually came from Rhode Island to sign committal
Speaker 2: papers to have him sent to Elgin State Insane Asylum,
Speaker 2: where he says, and you know, we don't We've talked
Speaker 2: before about how hard it is to get any hard
Speaker 2: facts about what happens and what happened in those places
Speaker 2: back then. But Bronner himself said that he was he
Speaker 2: had to sleep on a concrete slab that he was
Speaker 2: chained to every night. He was forced us into solitary
Speaker 2: confinement and electroshock therapy. We don't know which parts of that,
Speaker 2: if all of it or none of it is true,
Speaker 2: but that's what he said happened, and in fact, if
Speaker 2: you see pictures of the older doctor Browner, he's always
Speaker 2: got on these these dark glasses. That's because he lost
Speaker 2: his eyesight very slowly over the years, and he credits
Speaker 2: that or blames it rather on the shock treatments that
Speaker 2: he got in at Elgin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he would later on say he would call Elgin
Speaker 1: a concentration camp and say that he was put to
Speaker 1: hard labor mixing concrete. And he probably was put to
Speaker 1: work because they did use inmates for labor back then,
Speaker 1: but they, like he would say, like in the concentration
Speaker 1: camps I did. Is what he was talking about was
Speaker 1: the mental institution that he was committed to by his sister,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't very happy there, as you can guess,
Speaker 1: So he escaped. He escaped three times, and the third
Speaker 1: time was the charm. He finally got away. It's always
Speaker 1: the last escape attempt, you know, Well.
Speaker 2: Didn't he just kind of get up and leave. When
Speaker 2: his sister visited, she.
Speaker 1: Was allowed to make him out to lunch. She went
Speaker 1: to the bathroom, he stole five bucks out of her
Speaker 1: purse and took off and made it. He made it
Speaker 1: all the way to Vegas. He hitchhiked to Los Angeles
Speaker 1: and apparently he had a ride all the way there
Speaker 1: and he made the mistake of mentioning to the driver
Speaker 1: that he had just escaped from a mental hospital, and
Speaker 1: the drivers like, I'm gonna let you off in Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: how about that? And he took that five dollars or
Speaker 1: whatever was left of it, and I want to say
Speaker 1: it was a roulette spin and managed to make enough
Speaker 1: money to get him the rest of the way out
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles and rent a room while when he got.
Speaker 2: There quite a story. So what we're saying is his
Speaker 2: big successful attempt was he was taken out to lunch
Speaker 2: and he got up and left.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I guess so for sure.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there was no like barbed wire or
Speaker 1: climbing over stuff or searchlights to anything. There was probably
Speaker 1: a hot beef.
Speaker 2: Right, So he ends up in Los Angeles. The company,
Speaker 2: the real company that we know is doctor Browner's Soap
Speaker 2: Company was founded then in nineteen forty eight. That's when
Speaker 2: the company started. In Earnest he would go to Pershing
Speaker 2: Square in downtown LA where people would manic street preach
Speaker 2: and he would literally stand on a soapbox and preaches
Speaker 2: moral ABC to people. I keep wanting to say ABC's
Speaker 2: but it's ABC. Yeah, just like Scorpions, Yeah exactly. And
Speaker 2: he would preach and then sell bottles of this liquid soap,
Speaker 2: and people loved the soap so much they would go
Speaker 2: back and just buy the soap. So that's where he
Speaker 2: was like, no one's even listening to preach anymore. And
Speaker 2: that's where the idea hatched, was to actually put the
Speaker 2: message on the soap, bing bang boom. Didn't even have
Speaker 2: to stand around in that soapbox anymore.
Speaker 1: Right, So again, like this, I'm trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to get him across. If it's not coming through,
Speaker 1: maybe this will do it. Throughout the nineteen fifties, he
Speaker 1: became obsessed with the idea that communists were secretly running
Speaker 1: the United States and ruining it, and he used to
Speaker 1: call the Los Angeles Field office of the FBI every
Speaker 1: day to tell them how to root out communists or
Speaker 1: suggest ways of finding communists and getting rid of them,
Speaker 1: and they eventually created a file on him because he
Speaker 1: called so much.
Speaker 2: That's a good way to get on the FBI's list
Speaker 2: is to call them every day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just call them directly. You want an FBI an
Speaker 1: FBI file, just start calling him every day. And then
Speaker 1: he also was really concerned that fluoride that was in
Speaker 1: the water had actually been put there to poison us.
Speaker 1: And that's a pretty interesting idea that the whole I
Speaker 1: guess theory that fluoride is detrimental to us came from
Speaker 1: doctor Brauner, possibly because he seems to be one of
Speaker 1: those pop culture influencers that you just had no idea
Speaker 1: that something you thought or think can be traced directly
Speaker 1: back to him and his ideas. But there's a few
Speaker 1: examples of that, and this could be one of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. You mentioned early at the very beginning, like, oh,
Speaker 2: I just heard about that soap in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: or maybe my parents did. That's because in the nineteen
Speaker 2: sixties things were going bad, and then they started going
Speaker 2: really well. He was in trouble with the irs. He
Speaker 2: had registered the company as a nonprofit. The FEDS were like, no,
Speaker 2: it's not a nonprofit. So he said, all right, I'm
Speaker 2: going to stop selling soap all together. I'm going to
Speaker 2: concentrate just on my preaching on the fluoride issue. And
Speaker 2: as it seems, you know, these stories are all I
Speaker 2: think taken a little bit with a grain of salts
Speaker 2: as far as the timing, sure, but supposedly that's when
Speaker 2: a couple of hippies walked up to the door with
Speaker 2: a bunch of money and said, Hey, we want a
Speaker 2: couple of fifty gallon drums of your soap. And this
Speaker 2: idea was like, wait a minute. These hippies in San
Speaker 2: Francisco Summer of Love one of those years, they loved
Speaker 2: this soap, and all of a sudden they had like
Speaker 2: a like a willing audience. Who I think the hippies
Speaker 2: were perfect in that they they liked the soap, of course,
Speaker 2: but they also liked it being all natural, and they
Speaker 2: liked this kind of wacky guy had all this stuff
Speaker 2: on the label. It just really fit with that whole
Speaker 2: sixties thing, and that turned the company around.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I saw that I described as the world was
Speaker 1: finally ready for doctor Browner and his ideas, because.
Speaker 2: It sounds about right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he'd been like espousing eco consciousness and brotherly love
Speaker 1: and a lot of the stuff the hippies were into
Speaker 1: since the forties, probably a little earlier, but definitely since
Speaker 1: the mid forties. And yeah, so they kind of became
Speaker 1: followers of doctor Barner. They would hang out at his
Speaker 1: house which was also the factory in Escondido, California, and
Speaker 1: he would also he put his phone number on the
Speaker 1: his home phone number, and he had a bunch of
Speaker 1: different phones I guess the same phone number went to
Speaker 1: a bunch of different lines, and would answer calls from
Speaker 1: customers like all day and all night and just start
Speaker 1: talking to them about the moral ABC and talking to
Speaker 1: them about how to use his product and just basically
Speaker 1: anything that was on his mind. Because he loved to talk.
Speaker 1: I saw it didn't matter whether it was a tape recorder,
Speaker 1: a reporter, a customer calling in, or a a child,
Speaker 1: one of his kids. Like he just he just went
Speaker 1: off constantly on his thoughts and his tangents and his
Speaker 1: moral ABC and what it meant and how to live.
Speaker 1: And the hippies definitely vibed on that for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the word narcissist has probably been used
Speaker 2: more than once with doctor Browner.
Speaker 1: It's entirely possible. But if you watch him interact with
Speaker 1: his family, he's in his old age, he's very kind
Speaker 1: of tender and relaxed and calm and doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: he's manipulating them or anything like that. It's strange. I
Speaker 1: think he has his own condition, a unique condition.
Speaker 2: He has Doctor Bronnerism.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But he was not a good business person. Like
Speaker 2: we've mentioned quite a few times. He would not sell
Speaker 2: his soaps because he was working on that label. He
Speaker 2: would not deliver his soaps and orders. He owed a
Speaker 2: lot to the I R. S In back taxes, like
Speaker 2: millions of dollars. And even though they did pretty well
Speaker 2: in the sixties, by the eighties he had kind of
Speaker 2: run the company back into the ground there on the
Speaker 2: brink of bankruptcy. And that's when his son, his oldest son, Jim,
Speaker 2: turned the company around. He turns out Jim was a
Speaker 2: great business person. He was great at making the manufacturing
Speaker 2: process more efficient. He balanced the books. He even took
Speaker 2: the moral ABC and was like, Hey, we've got a
Speaker 2: thing here, but maybe we should craft it into a
Speaker 2: and just something that makes a little more sense, Like
Speaker 2: just sort of shape it and give it more of
Speaker 2: a story so it doesn't sound like a Mannick Street
Speaker 2: preacher just babbling things on the corner.
Speaker 1: Right, I say we take a break and come back
Speaker 1: and talk about what they did with that.
Speaker 2: Let's do it all right. So when we left, we
Speaker 2: talked about eldest son, Jim Bronner, sort of shaping and
Speaker 2: forming the Moral ABC into what we see today on
Speaker 2: the label. And he did that through and it got way.
Speaker 2: They really leaned into the hippie stuff too, because a
Speaker 2: it seems like I don't know as much about Jim,
Speaker 2: but Ralph, his brother, was total hippie, still is. And
Speaker 2: they started saying things like, all right, the Moral ABC
Speaker 2: are now the six cosmic principles. Stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they went through, they rooted through his philosophy
Speaker 1: which they'd been harangued by and probably knew by heart
Speaker 1: since they were little kids. That when he came to
Speaker 1: visit them, and they basically mined it for the best ideas,
Speaker 1: and they boiled it down to those six cosmic principles.
Speaker 1: The first is ourselves, work hard, grow our customers, do
Speaker 1: right by customers. It's a good one. Our employees treat
Speaker 1: employees like family, and as we'll see, they definitely live
Speaker 1: up to that one. Our suppliers be fair to suppliers,
Speaker 1: our earth, treat the earth like home. Our community fund
Speaker 1: and fight for what's right. And this is like their company,
Speaker 1: their corporate ethos, and they legitimately stick to it. This
Speaker 1: is in no way, shape or form a gimmick greenwashing marketing.
Speaker 1: It's it's exactly what this family company lives by.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's pretty remarkable they I mean, we'll just
Speaker 2: list off some of the things they do as a
Speaker 2: company and you can decide for yourself whether you feel
Speaker 2: good about supporting them. But during Jim's tenure, he passed
Speaker 2: away not long after his father, which you know we'll
Speaker 2: get to, but they introduced a basically one hundred percent
Speaker 2: coverage for health insurance, zero deductible health plan, a fifteen
Speaker 2: percent profit sharing plan. Ten years after that, they said,
Speaker 2: all right, as a company, we're going to have a
Speaker 2: five to one compensation cap. So that means, at no
Speaker 2: point in our company's history or future history, I guess,
Speaker 2: will the highest played, highest paid employee be more than
Speaker 2: five times compensated what the lowest paid employee is, which
Speaker 2: is remarkable to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So that means that like the people leading the
Speaker 1: company or making about I saw about three hundred grand
Speaker 1: a year, and I mean they could be making so
Speaker 1: much more than that because the company pulls in tens
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars now, but rather than funnel it
Speaker 1: out of the company, the kids and grandkids decided to
Speaker 1: invest it back into the company by paying the workers
Speaker 1: really well, by funding political causes, and essentially just making
Speaker 1: their product better and better. That's I mean, you just don't.
Speaker 1: You don't see that anymore. It was remarkable back in
Speaker 1: the day. Now it's like mind boggling, you know.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, if you you know, get like fair trade
Speaker 2: coffee or any kind of fair trade product, or a
Speaker 2: cosmetic or soap or something that it says is made
Speaker 2: with fair trade ingredients, he was way or the company
Speaker 2: was way ahead of that. I mean, they've kind of
Speaker 2: done that to start. Their raw materials have always come
Speaker 2: from fair trade partnerships, back when people didn't even know
Speaker 2: what that meant. They donated, and this is a few
Speaker 2: years ago. In twenty twenty two, they donated close to
Speaker 2: nine million bucks, which was about a third of their
Speaker 2: net profits, to three hundred more than three hundred nonprofits.
Speaker 2: And like you said, they you know, they're heavily involved
Speaker 2: in progressive politics. They published an election guide that basically
Speaker 2: say here's who these candidates are, here's what causes they support,
Speaker 2: and how it aligns with the causes we support or not,
Speaker 2: and I believe over the past two decades as a company,
Speaker 2: they've donated more than one hundred million dollars to their
Speaker 2: various charities and activism or activist organizations.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I want to say typically progressive, but I think
Speaker 1: it's one hundred percent progressive.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things they fought for for years was
Speaker 1: legalizing hemp. Industrial hemp the stuff you can't get high
Speaker 1: off of, but you can use a million different ways,
Speaker 1: and they helped get that pushed forward just from agitating.
Speaker 1: I think it was David Brauner, the grandson. I don't
Speaker 1: remember if he's Jim or Ralph's kid, but he's the
Speaker 1: Cosmic Engagement Officer CEO. He's actually the vice president, but
Speaker 1: he's in charge of activism, and he did a lot
Speaker 1: of I guess publicity sends to draw attention to industrial hemp,
Speaker 1: like he was arrested in two thousand and nine for
Speaker 1: planting hemp seeds outside the DEA headquarters. He locked himself
Speaker 1: in a cage with a bunch of hemp outside the
Speaker 1: White House. He had to be cut out, I think
Speaker 1: with the jaws of life. And finally, when hemp farming
Speaker 1: was legalized in twenty eighteen. They sent out this celebratory
Speaker 1: press release about how, like what a great day this was.
Speaker 1: It's kind of cute to read.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and by the way, that's who I was thinking
Speaker 2: of when I talked about kind of what a hippie.
Speaker 2: He was, not Ralph, it was David the grandson.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he's super hippie. There's a GQ profile of
Speaker 1: the company and the I guess they call it the
Speaker 1: hero image is David Browner with his tongue stuck out
Speaker 1: and there's a hit of blotterer on his tongue, but
Speaker 1: it's the doctor Broner's logo on the blotterer and like
Speaker 1: they're super into legalizing psychedelics, especially for use in mental health.
Speaker 1: And that health plan that they came up with. They're
Speaker 1: the first company to subsidize ketamine assisted therapy. Yeah, using psychedelics,
Speaker 1: Like that's part of the health plan. You can go
Speaker 1: get that and the company covers it with their one
Speaker 1: hundred percent coverage health plan.
Speaker 2: Pretty amazing. So I mentioned that Jim Broner passed away
Speaker 2: around the same time as his father, Emmanuel Browner, died
Speaker 2: in ninety seven from complications from Parkinson's disease, and his son,
Speaker 2: his eldest son that turned the company around, passed a
Speaker 2: year later from cancer. They were making, you know, like
Speaker 2: you said, it's really taking off lately. In the late nineties,
Speaker 2: they were doing pretty well. They were making you know,
Speaker 2: four or five million bucks a year as a company,
Speaker 2: which is awesome, but like you said, it was sort
Speaker 2: of hippie dippy. Health food stores is where you'd find it.
Speaker 2: It really exploded in the in the teens, in the
Speaker 2: twenty teens, that is, and especially after twenty twenty with
Speaker 2: COVID when people were washing their hands a lot. I
Speaker 2: think they they almost reached the two hundred million dollar
Speaker 2: level during COVID, and you know, considering where they started
Speaker 2: and then all the ups and downs in between, that's
Speaker 2: quite an accomplishment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. They also sell a bunch of other
Speaker 1: stuff too, including chocolate toothpaste, pretty good toothpaste. But the
Speaker 1: thing is, the irony of all this stuff is that
Speaker 1: you can use the casteel soap for most of this,
Speaker 1: not the chocolate, but you can brush your teeth with it,
Speaker 1: you can wash your hair with it, you can gargle
Speaker 1: with it. Apparently it helps clear up congestion. It does
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff, and I believe it says all
Speaker 1: eighteen uses on the label, and you can go read
Speaker 1: the labels and get you know, the moral ABC out
Speaker 1: of them, and each one's a little different. It has
Speaker 1: some other stuff that the other labels don't have, so
Speaker 1: you have to buy them all.
Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, And now I mean I don't have any,
Speaker 2: but I you know now that Emily is making our
Speaker 2: own cast deal soap from her company. Uh you know
Speaker 2: it's all bets are off.
Speaker 1: I washed my hair with it this very morning.
Speaker 2: No, we still actually have a big stash of Emily soap,
Speaker 2: and she just made some for the family the other day,
Speaker 2: so I don't think it will be switching over anytime soon.
Speaker 2: But Doctor Browner's is good stuff.
Speaker 1: We can come to my house if you if you
Speaker 1: want to use some Doctor Browner's get away.
Speaker 2: Oh good, I.
Speaker 1: Could use some of Emily soap though, just you know, hint, hint, I.
Speaker 2: Bet we could find a squeeze bottle or a misshapen bar. Sure.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about doctor Browner? Wait,
Speaker 1: should we should tell him? Should we tell him the
Speaker 1: Mark Spitz thing? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I forgot about that. What was the deal he
Speaker 2: was on the label?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was held up along with Jesus Thomas Zazz,
Speaker 1: the psychiatrist E. L. Zamenhoff, the guy who created Esperanto
Speaker 1: as a great example of a Jewish person who helped
Speaker 1: change the world, because he had set the record for
Speaker 1: the most gold medals in a single event her sport.
Speaker 1: I guess. And in two thousand and eight he finally
Speaker 1: was like, get me off of this label and sued
Speaker 1: Doctor Browner's, and I guess they settled for some undisclosed amount.
Speaker 1: He's like, stop venerating me, give me some money instead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and give me off of that wheaties box.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about doctor Browner's, you
Speaker 1: can go read some doctor Broner's labels and read a
Speaker 1: bunch of good articles on them too. And in the meantime,
Speaker 1: while you do that, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2: Well, my friend, it is not, because today we send
Speaker 2: a message out that is all a plea to define
Speaker 2: people of Atlanta, Georgia. We have a live show and
Speaker 2: all the other cities are doing great, and we're selling
Speaker 2: We sold out in Indianapolis and we're selling great all
Speaker 2: in Chicago, and Minneapolis and almost sold out in Durham. Nice,
Speaker 2: but for some reason, our hometown show is lagging.
Speaker 1: Because these are the people who know us, like really
Speaker 1: know us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like whatever, you're here, you live here.
Speaker 1: We see you at the library, like every week.
Speaker 2: I'll see Chuck at the car watch all the time.
Speaker 1: That's a fifty.
Speaker 2: So we're just asking for some support. This will be
Speaker 2: the last show the tour. It's a great show. Josh
Speaker 2: put this one together and it's just it's a really
Speaker 2: good one and we'd love to see everyone in Symphony
Speaker 2: Hall on what is it the seventh or eighth of September.
Speaker 1: The seventh, seventh, it's a Friday.
Speaker 2: It's a Friday night show, everybody. Those are the good ones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so come see us because we want to see you.
Speaker 2: And it's it's a seventh, it's a Saturday.
Speaker 1: It's a Saturday at the seventh on the seventh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're Durham.
Speaker 1: On the fifth that's a Thursday.
Speaker 2: And then the sixth we got the night off right,
Speaker 2: Josh's gonna wash my hair and then the seventh of
Speaker 2: September at Atlanta Symphony Hall. Tickets are still available, just
Speaker 2: go to our website. And go to the Symphony Hall
Speaker 2: website and buy some tickets and come see us, because
Speaker 2: who knows, we may never do another live show again.
Speaker 1: It's possible.
Speaker 2: Actually that's not true, but come out in net cs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you want to go to buy tickets, you
Speaker 1: can go to link tree, slash, s ysk Live or
Speaker 1: our website Stuff you Should Know dot com and click
Speaker 1: on the tour button and yeah, and if you want
Speaker 1: to get in touch with this like normal, you can
Speaker 1: send us an email. Send it off to stuff Podcasts
Speaker 1: at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M