Who was Dr. Bronner?
2024-07-30 00:49:08
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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. So this is Stuff You Should Know.
Oft-requested edition. I knew someone had asked for this, so I did a little Google or not Google, but email search. And seven people requested this over the last four years.
What are their names?
Shannon Mendonca, Megan Delfino, Josh Cronin.
Come on down.
Michelle Roberts, Alec Cole, Jonathan, Markwan or Markvin. Can't read my own writing. And then Micah P. Micah, I don't know how to pronounce your name. P-E-G-U-E-S.
P-E-G-U-E-S.
I'm sure there's a pronunciation.
Pegus. Pegus.
I'm calling him Micah P, my old buddy. I think Micah was the first one dating back to 2020.. Or at least as far as my email went back to search for Dr. Brawner.
Yeah, that's who we're talking about, Dr. Brawner. And if you're like, that name sounds familiar, you might be familiar with Dr. Brawner's 18-in-1 Magic Soap, which, Dr. Brawner, the company, has been selling since at least the 1940s.
And if you said, what? I've only known that since the 60s or the 70s, or the 80s or the 90s or two years ago. It's true. This stuff has been around for a very long time. And Dr.
Brawner himself is enough of a character to warrant an episode. We're not really talking about the soap today.
No, but one thing you probably have, there's no way you could not notice it, is the iconic labels on the soap, which have 2,729 words printed in five-point font, making up what we'll talk about later, the moral ABC. And we'll get to why all that happened. But it's a unique company in a couple of ways, in many, many ways. But one is they have never spent money on advertising. That's amazing.
Not a penny. And it started out as a, well, we'll get to the origins. But now it's one of the top-selling organic soaps on the market, with revenues approaching $200 million.
Yeah. And it went through quite a circuitous route to get there, because not very long ago, you bought that at like, your local health food store. that smelled like, you know, valerian root everywhere.
Yeah. Incense.
Yeah. And they've just kind of blown up. And what's neat is they've continued to grow under successive generations. So I say we talk about Dr. Brawner and where he came from in the first place.
All right. Like you said, if you look at the label, it will say family soap makers since 1858.. And that is when the Heilbronner family in Germany started making soap. They were a Jewish family in Laupheim, Germany. And Dr.
Brawner himself would later drop the Heil part of his name because of obvious reasons in World War II. But in the 1890s, the Heilbronners were making tons of soap in three factories in Germany. He came from a very well-heeled kind of legendary Castile soap making company.
Yeah. I was going to say he was trained by his family to make Castile soap, which is kind of soap made or originated, I guess, around maybe the Mediterranean that uses vegetable oils instead of animal fats. And it's softer and it does less drying on the skin. And it's a true soap. It undergoes saponification.
It's not a detergent like a lot of other soaps. It's a genuine, true soap. And he learned to make that back in the early 1900s. He was born in 1908.. So sometime after that, he learned how to make Castile soap.
Yeah, he was born Emil Heilbronner. Like we said, that's the less obnoxious way to say it.
I like how you've been saying. I was going to compliment you, honestly.
Heilbronner. He, you know, in Germany and a lot of, well, a lot of people that or a lot of places that have the sort of apprentice model. That's what he did. He was an apprentice and then a journeyman and then eventually was a master soap maker. Only formal education he received was that the doctor was self-bestowed and completely made up.
And that totally fits him, as we'll see.
Absolutely. But he and his parents were at odds. His wealthy family were more just sort of old school, politically orthodox Jewish family. They didn't want radical politics in their house. And so Emil's belief in a national homeland for the Jewish people and Zionism did not jive with what his family wanted to do.
So they basically said, hey, enough of that, or get the heck out of here. So in 1929, in December of that year, Emil went to the United States.
Yeah, at age 21. And he went essentially like without a plan, without much money. He just showed up in New York City and he chose a particularly terrible time, or I should say his father chose a particularly terrible time. He showed up just after the stock market crash of 1929 that kicked off the Great Depression. So he immediately found trouble or found getting work troublesome.
He did manage to kind of keep himself afloat by making soap or teaching others how to make soap. And he's routinely considered a genius. There's a, I think, either a police report or a mental institution report on him that says he very clearly seems to have a wealth of scientific knowledge in his head. So he knew what he was doing with chemistry, even though, like you said, his only formal education was in soap making. He understood the chemistry of the whole thing and what adding this to it or that to it would, what changes that would have.
So he was able to kind of keep himself going through soap making for essentially his whole life starting about now.
Yeah, he got married in 1930 to another German immigrant named Paula Wohlfahrt. She has an interesting back story in that and tragic in that she was born to from an affair between a Catholic priest and a nun. And that nun, very sadly, took her life and put I don't know if it she put her up for adoption before or if that de facto put her up for adoption. But either way, the nun took her life. Paula was adopted, obviously wasn't Jewish, which would not endear herself to Emil's family as well as Emil himself.
And in 1935, Emil made his first batch of peppermint oil soap, which today is their biggest seller, still, as a diaper cleaner. when they had cloth diapers. It was a diaper sanitizer. And hey, my God, can you make this smell any.
better kind of product? So in 1936, he became a naturalized citizen. And this is when he changed his name from Emil Heilbronner to Emanuel Theodore Bronner. And most people call him Dr. E.H.
Bronner. Again, he's not a doctor. He just decided to call himself a doctor. Although people cite his master chemist status as a soap maker to, at least, you know, kind of justify it. But there's no getting around the fact that he bestowed the doctor on himself.
And they think that the H in E.H. is kind of a nod to the Heil from Heilbronner that he dropped. OK, that's not me. I'm not making.
that up. Previous to World War Two, he was doing? OK. He was, he was making soap, doing pretty well. He had his wife, he had his family.
What do you have? Three kids. Is that right? Two boys and a girl. After the war, everything had fallen apart for him in his life.
Basically, Hitler, of course, came into power. He and his siblings were begging his parents to leave Germany, which they would not do. And, you know, the worst thing happened that they were afraid of. They were forced to hand over their business. They were sent to concentration camps and they were both killed.
Yeah. And I was reading a blog post from Lisa Bronner, who's Dr. Bronner's granddaughter, and she was explaining that there was a forced sale of their soap making business to the Third Reich, to the German state, because they were Jewish. They were not allowed to own businesses like that. And that would be obviously like a clear signal to everybody, like probably should leave the country now.
But the Germans also at this time had a law that well-heeled Jewish people could not leave Germany with capital. You could leave, but you could not take a penny of German money outside of the country with you. And so if you were wealthy and Jewish, it would be kind of tough to just be like, you know what? Forget it. My entire family fortune, I'm just going to forget about it just to get out of Germany, because I still don't think like the German people are so crazy that they're going to let this guy just keep going.
And it got to the point where it became too late. And there's a part of family lore is that Dr. Bronner got a last postcard from his father after his detention in the concentration camp. And it says, like everything else is redacted, but at the very end it says, you were right. You're a loving father, which is, that's about as heartbreaking as it gets.
But that was a big, big deal to Dr. Bronner, as his sister would later.
attest. Oh, of course. Another tragedy and big deal in his life is when his wife suffered a fall after they had their third kid. And that was kind of it for her. She became depressed.
She stopped eating. She had suicidal ideation, eventually died in a state mental hospital outside of Chicago.
And I tried to find out more and more about maybe what happened with her. And there's just not a lot out there. I suspect that maybe there was some sort of head injury. It just sort of tracks along those lines, maybe in that fall. But either way, he was left a widower with three young children.
And, as we'll see, was not much of a dad. He was not around much and did not dad much.
No, no. There's one thing that everybody agrees is that he was a terrible father in almost every way. Not always, but almost every way, especially on paper. Like when you just read about how, what kind of father he was, it's, it's crazy that his kids ever, you know, embraced him or.
stuck around with him, you know? Yeah. Well, I mean, we might as well go ahead and talk about it. I believe that, um, they were at various times, um, uh, in orphanages and placed with other families and he kind of straight up said, and, you know, as we'll see, he, he becomes a bit of a zealot for his, uh, of his ideas and kind of a, kind of a manic street preacher type. And he would literally say like, who has time to parent kids when I have to like, spread, spread my word around.
Right. And he made no bones about it, you know, that just, he, he wasn't going to parent.
these kids. Yeah, no. And he would come back once or twice a year and visit them. Um, but yeah, he was like, I have to go out and do this. I have a, I have a much bigger mission than raising you kids.
And, um, yeah, that's a really tough thing to, to swallow, I'm sure, as you're a kid. And then even as an adult, when you're looking back, but again, astoundingly, his kids stuck with him and learned to just kind of deal with the fact that their father had abandoned them in about the most overt way. a father can abandon a child. Um, and, and spent the rest of their lives with them once they grew up and were able to, to basically get out of the foster and orphanage.
systems. Yeah, absolutely. So I mentioned him being, you know, having these big ideas. I mentioned the moral ABC and, kind of, like the manic street preacher, shout out to the band. Um, this all came from this idea of, uh, post-World War II.
He had sort of a, either a breakthrough or a breakdown in his mind about this. could be it. We're on the brink of destruction as a, as a people. Um, mankind needs a big shift in our perspectives, how we think about politics, how we think about, uh, the, our time on earth and the afterlife. Uh, he, he basically was like.
the only way forward for us, if we're going to survive as a species, is to become the United States of the world and to be all together as one people. Um, and not, and you know, it wasn't the most radical idea. There have been plenty of people that talked about stuff like this, but he's like, we are all children of the same God. And the only thing that can save us from that is if we all get together and come together as one. Yeah.
I'm glad you said that he either had a.
breakthrough or breakdown, because, um, his sister, Louise, uh, who will play a big role in a minute. Um, she traces the origin of his zealousness in this, his need to like spread this message to the time when both of his parents were killed, murdered, and his wife died, like all within basically a year. Um, and that he changed. after that. And depending on who you talk to and how you look at it, he changed either for the better and like became the person he was supposed to be, or his ideas were just super kooky, and he managed to support himself just by the grace of making soap.
Yeah. So, uh, I mentioned the moral ABC. This is basically the end result of his, um, sort of, uh, an end result, meaning it was still a work in progress to the day he died. He was always tinkering with this moral ABC, which is, is the thing printed on that soap label. Um, all one is the big rallying cry, which is what I was kind of alluding to earlier, uh, with his thoughts, but that is what he, I mean, to secondary to selling soap, he was worried about this label and the words on it.
It's seemingly his entire life until he died. Yeah. He figured out that he could use.
the soap as a way to get the word out there, which is pretty genius actually. And that's where the label came from. Should we take a break? Yeah, let's. All right.
Well, Vaughn, the Olympics are underway. It's useless to talk about it as a thing. that's happening in the future. when it's happening in the present. It's happening now.
And what's happening now is our podcast. Two guys, five rings is a phenomenon. And while real medals are.
being handed out in Paris, we're giving out our fake medals here. Two guys, five rings,
Matt Bowen and the Olympics. Who are we watching this? Olympic games? I mean, I'm watching Simone Biles. I'm watching her go higher and higher and higher with every bounce.
she carries about to run faster than you or I or anyone has ever seen. I'm ready for the girls and the boys and everybody under the Seine River, under the Seine, over the Seine, within the waters of the Seine, all of them. Follow the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform, and watch and listen to every moment of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, now through August 11th on NBC and Peacock and, for the first time ever, on the iHeartRadio app.
Miss the latest in women's basketball? Don't sweat it. I've got you covered. Welcome to, In Case You Missed It. with Christina Williams, the podcast that's your go-to source for women's hoops.
From buzzer beaters to breaking news, I bring you the highlights, analysis and expert insights you need to stay ahead of the game. The people have spoken and it's time to give the stories that matter most the spotlight. It's time to blaze our own path and embrace new voices. From the WNBA, get ready for Asia Wilson and the Las Vegas Aces on a mission for a historic three-peat. Plus, the anticipation is building as Kaitlyn Clark and the talented 2024 rookie class bring a fresh wave of excitement to the league.
And in the world of women's college hoops, the Gamecocks reign supreme. Dawn Staley's squad is unstoppable, but will they stay on top? Listen to, In Case You Missed It on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your.
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Okay, Chuck. So after some period of time, he ended up in Chicago and, like you said, he became a manic street preacher in Chicago and he attracted an adherent. This is kind of like a little side story, but it's worth telling because I think it really kind of gets the point across about Brawner and who he was, and the people he hung out with at the time. Because he came out as like the reasonable one out of this one. But one of his devotees was named Fred Walker, who he had attracted.
And Fred Walker, who would turn out to be a Nazi sympathizer, but before that was clear, he was an Austrian immigrant who had created his own universal brotherhood movement called American Industrial Democracy. And he really was vibing on what Brawner was saying. And at some point, I guess, either he or they, it's not clear, got the idea of creating a publicity stunt to get their ideas out there to more people. And apparently, Fred Walker submitted or suggested that he be crucified to get this message out as a publicity stunt. And.
he was crucified. Yeah. This is outside of L station, a train station in Chicago, March 9th, 1945.. Cops were called down there and, like dude on a cross with nails, the whole nine yards. It wasn't like a show.
And he was tied up there. It was a real crucifixion that he survived. Um, he, uh, at some point mentioned Bronner's name and the cops went and talked to Bronner and said, hey, um, do you, uh, have, um, I, I think he mentioned the, the peace plan or something like that Walker did to the cops. Right. And they said, are you a Bronner?
And they said, yeah. And he said, do you have this, a peace plan? He went, sure I do. And I even have a pamphlet. They're like, oh, why don't you come talk to us then about what happened to your friend?
Nothing ever happened. I guess everyone just clammed up about how, uh, he was actually, uh, literally, crucified, but, um, in the hospital room with like reporters and everything in there, with this guy, Bronner was in there with, with his peace pamphlets, like passing them out to people.
Yeah. But apparently people were like, I, this is not the kind of thing I want to associate with crucifixion. You know, I, like, I, now think that your ideas are related to this man being crucified in Chicago. So it wasn't the best publicity stunt of all time, but it does kind of get across the kind of stuff and the kind of people that Dr. Bronner was hanging out with in Chicago in the mid forties.
And he developed a reputation pretty quickly because within a year he was arrested by the Chicago police and his life completely changed. at this point. Um, he was known for not taking no as an answer. He was known for not, um, knowing the meaning of the word, can't, uh, again, Lisa Bronner described him. Um, and there was a, uh, the international center, uh, college at the university of Chicago.
Um, they would have like seminars or presentations, or lectures, and Dr. Bronner was like, I've got a perfect lecture for you guys. Let me get up there and talk and tell everybody my all one sermon and that moral ABC. And they said, no, we don't want you to do that. Thanks for offering.
And the university of Chicago thought that was that.
Yeah. So, um, in March of 46, he comes back pretty hotheaded. He's yelling out his philosophies. He's kind of yelling out as a moral ABC, and a couple of cops come out and say, Hey, your, your car's parked illegally out there. Why don't you come out with us and we'll get it moved.
And I guess this was just the old cop thing to not cause a big scene inside. Uh, cause they get them outside immediately, arrest them, hit them with a blackjack. Uh, he's in jail for about a week. And, um, his sister Louise eventually came from Rhode Island to sign a committal papers to have them sent to Elgin state. insane asylum, uh, where he says, and you know, we don't, we've talked before about how hard it is to get any hard facts about what happens and what happened in those places back then.
But Bronner himself said that he was, he had to sleep on a concrete slab that he was chained to every night. Uh, he was forced us into solitary confinement and electroshock therapy. Um, we don't know which parts of that, if all of it or none of it is true, but that's what he said happened. Um, and in fact, if you see pictures of the older Dr. Bronner, he's always got on these, these dark glasses, um, that's cause.
he lost his eyesight very slowly over the years. And he credits that, or blames it rather, uh, on the shock treatments that he got in at Elgin.
Yeah. Um, he, he would later on say he would call Elgin a concentration camp and say that he was put to hard labor, mixing concrete. And he probably was put to, put to work because they did use inmates for labor back then. Um, but they, like, he would say, like in the concentration camps, I did this, what he was talking about was the, the mental institution that he was committed to by his sister. And he wasn't very happy there, as you can guess.
So he escaped. Um, he escaped three times, and the third time was the charm. He finally got away. It's always the last escape.
attempt, you know? Well, didn't he just kind of get up and leave when his sister visited?
He, she was allowed to take him out to lunch. She went to the bathroom. He stole five bucks out of her purse and took off and made it to, he made it all the way to Vegas. He hitchhiked to Los Angeles and apparently he had a ride all the way there. And he made the mistake of mentioning to the driver that he had just escaped from a mental hospital.
And the driver's like, I'm going to let you off in Las Vegas. How about that? And he took that $5 or whatever was left of it. And I want to say it was a roulette spin and managed to make enough money to get him the rest of the way out to Los Angeles and rent a room, while, when he got there. Quite a story.
So what?
we're saying is his big successful attempt was he was taken out to lunch and he got up and left.
Yeah. Yeah, I guess so for sure. Amazing. Yeah. I mean, there was no like barbed wire climbing over stuff or searchlights or anything.
There was probably a hot beef.
So he ends up in Los Angeles. The company, the real company that we know is Dr. Bronner's, you know, soap company was founded then in 1948.. That's when the company started. in earnest.
He would go to Pershing Square in downtown L.A. where people would Manic Street preach, and he would literally stand on a soapbox and preaches moral ABC to people. I keep wanting to say ABCs, but it's ABC. Yeah, just like scorpions. Yeah, exactly.
And he would preach and then sell bottles of this liquid soap, and people loved the soap so much. they would go back and just buy the soap. So that's where he was. like, no one's even listening to me preach anymore. And that's where the idea hatched was to actually put the message on the soap.
Bing, bang, boom. Didn't even have.
to stand around in that soapbox anymore. Right. So again, like this, I'm trying to figure out to get him across. if it's not coming through. Maybe this will do it.
Throughout the 1950s, he became obsessed with the idea that communists were secretly running the United States and ruining it. And he used to call the Los Angeles field office of the FBI every day to tell them how to root out communists or suggest ways of finding communists and getting rid of them. And they eventually created a file on him because he called so much.
It's a good way to get on the FBI's list is to call them every day. Yeah, just call them directly.
You want an FBI file? Just start calling them every day. And then he also was really concerned that fluoride that was in the water had actually been put there to poison us. And that's a pretty interesting idea. that the whole, I guess, theory that fluoride is detrimental to us came from Dr.
Brauner, possibly, because he seems to be one of those pop culture influencers that you just had no idea that that something you thought or think can be traced directly back to him and his ideas. But there's a few examples of that, and this could be one of them. Yeah, for sure. You.
mentioned early at the very beginning, like, oh, I just heard about that soap in the 1960s, or maybe my parents did. That's because in the 1960s,
things were going bad and then they started going really well. He was in trouble with the IRS. He had registered the company as a nonprofit. The feds were like, no, it's not a nonprofit. So he said, all right, I'm going to stop selling soap altogether.
I'm going to concentrate just on my preaching on the fluoride issue. And as it seems, you know, these stories are all, I think, taken a little bit with a grain of salt, as far as the timing. Sure. But supposedly that's when a couple of hippies walked up to the door with a bunch of money and said, hey, we want a couple of 50 gallon drums of your soap. And this idea was like, wait a minute, these hippies in San Francisco, Summer of Love, one of those years, they loved this soap.
And all of a sudden they had like a willing audience who I think the hippies were perfect in that? they liked the soap, of course, but they also liked it being all natural. And they liked this kind of wacky guy had all this stuff on the label. It just really fit with that whole 60s thing. And that turned the company around.
Yeah, I saw that. I saw it described as the world was finally ready for Dr. Brawner and his ideas, because that sounds about right. Yeah. Yeah.
He'd been like espousing eco consciousness and brotherly love and a lot of the stuff the hippies were into since the 40s, probably a little earlier, but definitely since the mid 40s. And yeah, so they kind of became followers of Dr. Brawner. They would hang out at his house, which was also the factory in Escondido, California. And he would also.
he put his phone number on the label, his home phone number. And he had a bunch of different phones. I guess the same phone number went to a bunch of different lines and would answer calls from customers like all day and all night, and just start talking to them about the moral ABC and talking to them about how to use this product and just basically anything that was on his mind because he loved to talk. I saw it didn't matter whether it was a tape recorder, a reporter, a customer calling in or a child, one of one of his kids. Like he.
just he just went off constantly on his, on his thoughts and his tangents and his moral ABC and what it meant and how to live. And the hippies definitely vibed on that, for sure. Yeah, I think the word.
narcissist has probably been used more than once with Dr. Brawner. It's entirely possible. But if
you watch him interact with the his family, he's in his old age. He's. he's very kind of tender, tender and relaxed and calm, and doesn't seem like he's manipulating them or anything like that. It's. it's strange.
I think he has his own condition, a unique condition.
He has Dr. Dr. Brawner ism. Yeah. Yeah.
But he was not a good business person, like we mentioned quite a few times. He would not sell his soaps because he was working on that label. He would not deliver his soaps and orders. He owed a lot to the IRS and back taxes, like millions of dollars. And even though they did pretty well in the 60s, by the 80s, he had kind of run the company back into the ground on the brink of bankruptcy.
And that's when his son, his oldest son, Jim, turned the company around. He, it turns out, Jim, was a great business person. He was great at making the manufacturing process more efficient. He balanced the books. He even took the moral ABC and was like, hey, we've got a thing here, but maybe we should craft it into a, into something that makes a little more sense, like just sort of shape it and give it more of a story.
so it doesn't sound like a manic street preacher just babbling things on the corner. Right.
I say we take a break and come back and talk about what they did with that. Let's do it.
Well, the Olympics are underway. It's useless to talk about it as a thing. that's happening in the future. when it's happening in the present. It's happening now.
And what's happening now is our podcast, Two Guys, Five Rings is a phenomenon. And while real medals are being handed out in Paris, we're giving out our fake medals here. Two Guys, Five Rings, Matt Bowen and the Olympics. Who are we watching this? Olympic Games?
I mean, I'm watching Simone Biles. I'm watching her go higher and higher and higher with every bounce. Sha'Carri's about to run faster than you or I or.
anyone has ever seen. I'm ready for the girls and the boys and everybody under the Seine River. Under.
the Seine, over the Seine, within the waters of the Seine, all of them. Follow the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform, and watch and listen to every moment of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games now through August 11th, on NBC and Peacock and for.
the first time ever on the iHeartRadio app.
Miss the latest in women's basketball? Don't sweat it. I've got you covered. Welcome to, In Case You Missed It, with Christina Williams, the podcast that's your go-to source for women's hoops. From buzzer beaters to breaking news, I bring you the highlights, analysis and expert insights you need to stay ahead of the game.
The people have spoken and it's time to give the stories that matter most the spotlight. It's time to blaze our own path and embrace new voices. From the WNBA, get ready for Asia Wilson and the Las Vegas Aces on a mission for a historic three-peat. Plus, the anticipation is building as Kaitlyn Clark and the talented 2024 rookie class bring a fresh wave of excitement to the league. And in the world of women's college hoops, the Gamecocks reign supreme.
Dawn Staley's squad is unstoppable, but will they stay on top? Listen to, In Case You Missed It, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm Katie Lowes. And I'm Guillermo Diaz.
And now we're back with another season of our podcast, Unpacking the Toolbox, where Guillermo and I will be re-watching the show.
To officially unpack season three of Scandal.
Unpredictable. You don't see it coming. It's a wild, wild ride that twists and turns in season three.
Mesmerizing.
But also, we get to hang out with all of our old Scandal friends, like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington.
So many people.
Even more shocking assassinations from Papa and Mama Pope.
And yes, Katie and I's famous teeth-pulling scene that kicks off a romance.
And it was peak TV. This is new Scandal, content for your eyes, for your ears, for your hearts, for your minds.
Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for an even more behind the scenes. Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts.
or wherever you get your podcasts.
All right. So when we left, we talked about eldest son, Jim Bronner, sort of shaping and forming the moral ABC into what we see today on the label. And he did that through, and it got way, they really leaned into the hippie stuff too. Because A, it seems like, I don't know as much about Jim, but Ralph, his brother, was a total hippie, still is. And they started saying things like, all right, the moral ABC are now the six cosmic principles, stuff like that.
Yeah, because they went through, they rooted through his philosophy, which they'd been harangued by and probably knew by heart since they were little kids when he came to visit them. And they basically mined it for the best ideas. And they boiled it down to those six cosmic principles. The first is ourselves, work hard, grow. Our customers, do right by customers.
It's a good one. Our employees, treat employees like family. And, as we'll see, they definitely live up to that one. Our suppliers, be fair to suppliers. Our earth, treat the earth like home.
Our community, fund and fight for what's right. And this is like their company, their corporate ethos. And they legitimately stick to it. In no way, shape or form, a gimmick, greenwashing, marketing. It's exactly what this family company lives by.
Yeah, yeah, it's pretty remarkable.
We'll just list off some of the things they do as a company, and you can decide for yourself whether you feel good about supporting them. But during Jim's tenure, he passed away not long after his father, which we'll get to. But they introduced a basically 100% coverage for health insurance, zero deductible health plan, a 15% profit sharing plan. Ten years after that, they said, all right, as a company, we're going to have a five to one compensation cap. So that means at no point in our company's history or future history, I guess, will the highest paid employee be more than five times compensated what the lowest paid employee is, which is remarkable to do.
Yeah, so that means that, like the people leading the company are making about, I saw about 300 grand a year. And I mean, they could be making so much more than that because the company pulls in tens of millions of dollars now. But rather than funnel it out of the company, the kids and grandkids decided to invest it back into the company by paying the workers really well, by funding political causes and essentially just making their product better and better. I mean, you just don't see that anymore. It was remarkable back in the day.
Now it's like mind boggling, you know?
Oh, absolutely. If you get like fair trade coffee or any kind of fair trade product, or a cosmetic or soap or something that it says is made with fair trade ingredients, he was way, or the company was way ahead of that. I mean, they've kind of done that since the start. Their raw materials have always come from fair trade partnerships. back when people didn't even know what that meant.
They donated, and this was a few years ago. in 2022, they donated close to nine million bucks, which was about a third of their net profits, to more than 300 nonprofits.
And, like you said, they're heavily involved in progressive politics. They publish an election guide that basically say, here's who these candidates are, here's what causes they support and how it aligns with the causes we support or not. And I believe over the past two decades as a company, they've donated more than $100 million to their various charities and activism or activist organizations.
Yeah. I want to say typically progressive, but I think it's 100% progressive. One of the things they fought for for years was legalizing hemp, industrial hemp, the stuff you can't get high off of, but you can use a million different ways. And they helped get that pushed forward just from agitating. I think it was David Brawner, the grandson.
I don't remember if he's Jim or Ralph's kid, but he's the cosmic engagement officer, CEO. He's actually the vice president, but he's in charge of activism. And he did a lot of, I guess, publicity sense to draw attention to industrial hemp. Like, he was arrested in 2009 for planting hemp seeds outside the DEA headquarters. He locked himself in a cage with a bunch of hemp outside the White House.
He had to be cut out, I think, with the jaws of life. And finally, when hemp farming was legalized in 2018, they sent out this celebratory press release about what a great day this was. It was kind of cute to read.
Yeah. And, by the way, that's who I was thinking of when I talked about. kind of what a hippie he was. Not Ralph. It was David, the grandson.
Oh yeah. He's super hippie. There's a GQ profile of the company. And I guess they call it the hero image is David Brawner with his tongue stuck out. And there's a hit of blotter on his tongue, but it's the Dr.
Brawner's logo on the blotter. And like. they're super into legalizing psychedelics, especially for use in mental health. And that health plan that they came up with, they're the first company to subsidize ketamine-assisted therapy using psychedelics. Like.
that's part of the health plan. You can go get that and the company covers it with their 100% coverage health plan.
Pretty amazing. So I mentioned that Jim Brawner passed away around the same time as his father. Emanuel Brawner died in 1997 from complications from Parkinson's disease. And his son, his eldest son that turned the company around, passed a year later from cancer. They were making, like you said, it's really taking off.
lately. In the late 90s, they were doing pretty well. They were making, you know, 4 or 5 million bucks a year as a company, which is awesome. But, like you said, it was sort of hippy-dippy. health food stores is where you'd find it.
It really exploded in the teens, in the 20 teens, that is. And especially after 2020 with COVID, when people were washing their hands a lot. I think they almost reached the $200 million level during COVID. And, you know, considering where they started and then all the ups and downs in between, that's quite an accomplishment.
Yeah, for sure. They also sell a bunch of other stuff too, including chocolate, toothpaste, pretty good toothpaste. But the thing is, the irony of all this stuff is that you can use the Castile soap for most of this, not the chocolate, but you can brush your teeth with it. You can wash your hair with it. You can gargle with it.
Apparently, it helps clear up congestion. It does all sorts of stuff. And I believe it says all 18 uses on the label. And you can go read the labels and get, you know, the moral ABC out of them. And each one's a little different.
It has some other stuff that the other labels don't have. So you have to buy them all, I guess.
Yeah. And now, I mean, I don't have any, but I, you know, now that Emily is making our own Castile soap from her company, you know, it's all. bets are off.
I washed my hair with it this very morning.
No, we still actually have a big stash of Emily soap. And she just made some for the family the other day.
Oh, nice.
So I don't think we'll be switching over anytime soon. But Dr. Bronner's is good stuff.
We can come to my house. if you want to use some Dr. Bronner's. Get away.
Oh, good. I stink.
I could use some Emily soap, though. Just, you know, hint, hint.
No, I bet we could find a squeezy bottle or two.
A misshapen bar.
Sure.
If you want to know more about Dr. Bronner. Wait, we should tell him. Should we tell him the Mark Spitz thing?
Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. What was the deal? He was on the label.
Yeah, he was held up along with Jesus, Thomas Szasz, the psychiatrist, LL Zamenhof, the guy who created Esperanto as a great example of a Jewish person who helped change the world because he had set the record for the most gold medals in a single event or sport, I guess. And in 2008, he finally was like, get me off of this label and sued Dr. Bronner's. And I guess they settled for some undisclosed amount. He's like, stop venerating me.
Give me some money instead.
Yeah. And get me off of that Wheaties box.
If you want to know more about Dr. Bronner's, you can go read some Dr. Bronner's labels and read a bunch of good articles on them, too. And in the meantime, while you do that, it's time for Listener Mail.
Well, my friend, it is not, because today we send a message out. That is all a plea to the fine people of Atlanta, Georgia. We have a live show and all the other cities are doing great. And we're selling, we sold out in Indianapolis and we're selling great all in Chicago and Minneapolis and almost sold out in Durham. Nice.
But for some reason, our hometown show is lagging.
Because these are the people who know us, like, really know us.
Yeah. So, like, whatever. You're here. You live here.
We see you at the library, like every week.
I see Chuck at the car wash all the time.
It's a schvifty.
So we're just asking for some support. This will be the last show of the tour. It's a great show. Josh put this one together and it's just, it's a really good one. And we'd love to see everyone in Symphony Hall on, what is it?
The 7th or 8th of September?
The 7th.
The 7th.
It's a Friday.
It's a Friday night. show, everybody. Those are the good ones. Yeah.
So come see us, because we want to see you.
No, it's the 7th. It's a Saturday.
It's a Saturday at the 7th, on the 7th.
Yeah, we're Durham on the 5th.
That's a Thursday.
And then the 6th, we got the night off.
Right.
Josh is going to wash my hair. And then the 7th of September at Atlanta. Symphony Hall. Tickets are still available. Just go to our website and go to the Symphony Hall website.
And buy some tickets and come see us. Because who knows, we may never do another live show again.
It's possible.
Actually, that's not true. But come out and let's see us.
Yeah, if you want to go to buy tickets, you can go to linktree.com or our website stuffyoushouldknow.com and click on the tour button. And yeah, and if you want to get in touch with us like normal, you can send us an email. Send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.
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Well, Bowen, the Olympics are underway. It's useless to talk about it as a thing. that's happening in the future, when it's happening in the present. And what's happening now is our podcast, Two Guys, Five Rings is a phenomenon. Two Guys, Five Rings, Matt Bowen and the Olympics.
Follow the show on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform, and watch and listen to every moment of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games now through August 11th on NBC and Peacock and, for the first time ever, on the iHeart Radio app.
Welcome to, In Case You Missed It, with Christina Williams, the podcast that's your go-to source for women's hoops. From buzzer beaters to breaking news, I bring you the highlights, analysis, and expert insights you need to stay ahead of the game.
The people have spoken and it's time to give the stories that matter most the spotlight. Listen to, In Case You Missed It, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, in case you missed it, don't worry, I've got you covered.
Hi, I'm Katie Lowes.
And I'm Guillermo Diaz.
And we're the hosts of Unpacking the Toolbox, the Scandal Rewatch podcast, where we're talking about all the best moments of the show.
Mesmerizing.
But also we get to hang out with all of our old scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington.
Well, suit up, gladiators, grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes stories with Unpacking the Toolbox.
Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
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