January 13, 2026 • 11 mins
The dark side of doing business is part of our tour through the Cabinet today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
If you've ever worked in any sort of service job,
you've probably heard the phrase the customer is always right.
It's a truism that is hard to believe when you're
dealing with an irate person or someone who simply doesn't
like you, and the saying isn't true in the literal sense.
The customer is rarely actually right all the time. But
the customer is the one with the money, so they're
(00:58):
the one who must be appeased. And if you failed
to do so, you may still hear from a customer
for days, weeks, or months later, especially if they're not
happy with your product or your behavior. To quote one
particularly irate customer complaint, what do you take me for
that you treat me with such contempt. Actually, that's not
something a recent customer said. That's a customer from over
(01:22):
three thousand years ago. I like to take you back
to seventeen fifty BCE to the ancient city states of
Er in ancient Mesopotamia. There a man named Nanni spoke
to a merchant about purchasing some copper ingots. The merchant,
whose name was a Nasir, wasn't just a copper trader.
He also sold textiles and foodstuffs on occasion, but his
(01:44):
primary specialty was copper, at least that's the impression he
gave to Nanni. He assured Nani that he would provide
him with copper of excellent quality as soon as he
got back from del Munn. He made the trip end
Upon his return, he sent word to Nanni that the
copper was ready. Nanni dispatched a servant to pick up
the copper and to pay the merchant for his services.
(02:06):
It should have been a fairly simple transaction. However, when
the servant arrived, he had a far less pleasant interaction
with the merchant than his master had. A Noasir set
the copper before him, and the servant quickly realized that
the ingots were not the right grade that Nanni had requested.
When he pointed this out, Anasir told the servant that
(02:26):
he can take or leave the copper. If he doesn't
want it, then he should get out of his sight.
The servant, not knowing what else to do, paid for
the copper and returned to his master. Hearing what had
happened to his servants by this merchant, Nani was outraged.
He wrote to a Nasir, accusing him of being rude
and callous and demanding that he sent his money back
(02:47):
as he would not accept poor quality copper from him.
And I wish that I could give you more of
this dramatic story, but we know little else about it
because all of the information that we have comes from
the written complaint that Nanni wrote to the merchant a Nasir.
It was on a clay tablet written in Akkadian Kuneiform.
The tablet was unearthed between nineteen twenty two and nineteen
(03:10):
thirty four by an expedition from the British Museum to
modern day Iraq. At around three thousand, seven hundred and
seventy five years old. It's thought to be the oldest
surviving customer complaint in history, and it wasn't the only
one that they found there. The building they found it
in contained several more tablets, also addressed to a nosir.
(03:31):
They were all fairly irate, with some asking about the
status of their orders, about undelivered orders or the copper
they were promised by the merchant. Others were requests for
a batch of copper to pick from. But even if
most of these dozen or so tablets were all annoyed
at this one merchant, none were as thoroughly frustrated as
Nani's message. Will likely never know if a nasir responded
(03:54):
to the storm of messages and complaints and accusations. Archaeologists
seemed to think that his business waned in the later years,
with his house being relatively small compared to other neighboring units.
The fact that he kept all of his customer complaints
implied that they were either from the latter days of
his business or he had a fairly petty nature. Few
of us get to choose the way that we are remembered.
(04:16):
Leaving behind a monument or a tomb is beyond even
the wildest dreams of the ordinary person, so it's curious
to think about how something like a customer complaint can
preserve names across the millennia, to the point where you
can read Nanni's complaint tablet yourself in the British Museum,
or at least a translation of it. We know just
how incensed this man was by the merchant's rudeness, making
(04:40):
the past a little more relatable in spite of the
vast gulf of time between us. It just goes to
show when you treat people rudely, they remember it. Perhaps
a nasir should have remembered the Golden Rule, or well,
maybe in this case we should say the Copper Rule.
(05:09):
A man walks into a pet shop in nineteen fifty
seven and stumbles upon his fortune. It sounds like the
start of some vaudevillian joke, but this is a true
story of a man who took the lowest of creatures
and with them built an empire of novelty, before making
a strange turn that nearly tore it all down. This
man was Harold von Braunhutt, born into a Jewish family
(05:31):
of toymakers in Memphis, Tennessee. In early life he was
something of a daredevil, racing motorcycles under the name the
Green Hornet before taking on clients as a talent agent.
These early forays into entertainment wouldn't pan out, and so
Harold changed his career path, looking for something new, and
so on one fateful day, he walked into that pet
(05:53):
shop where his eyes landed on a bucket that would
change his life forever. The bucket was filled with water,
and it contained thousands upon thousands of tiny, little swimmers.
They were Brian shrimp, which are a type of crustacean.
Brian shrimp, whose scientific name is Artemia selina, are a
species who have evolved to live inland in brine pools
(06:13):
and other salty inland waters. They're very small, the largest
of them grow only to about fifteen millimeters in length.
In nature, the tiny arthropods serve an important function in
their ecosystem. They eat green algae and so keep the
waters clean, and then they serve as food for migrating birds.
They've remained little changed since they appeared in the Triassic
(06:34):
period two hundred and fifty million years ago, and Harold
was fascinated by the tiny creatures. But what got his
imagination reeling was a curious biological trait. Their eggs are
capable of survival of up to two years out of water,
and are resistant to both heat and cold. This survival
mechanism made them perfect for shipping long distances. Harold saw
(06:56):
potential in these shrimp and hired a marine biologist to
breed the Brian shrimp to best endure shipping conditions. They
were sold in small kits, complete with packets which included
the desiccated eggs, an agent to purify the water and salt,
and instructions to create the perfect environment for the shrimp
to thrive. And he branded them as sea monkeys and
(07:17):
hired well known cartoonist Joe Orlando to design all new advertisements.
These ads showed a fantastical underwater wonderland with a family
of anthropomorphized pink Brian shrimp smiling up from the page.
They looked nothing like the product that would arrive to
eager children's doors, but that mattered very little to sales,
which skyrocketed as the first ads were released in nineteen
(07:40):
sixty four. And as a side note, as a kid
growing up in the eighties who frequented yard sales where
boxes of old comic books were sold, I distinctly remembered
these ads over and over again in almost every issue
I read, and as you'd imagine, Sea Monkeys became a
smash success, with sales rivaling ant farms and so Harold
(08:00):
used the same type of marketing for all new inventions,
selling a seemingly endless line of novelty toys, including X
ray specs, which ensnared the adolescent mind with promises of
seeing through clothing, and Crazy Crabs, which were hermit crabs
sold with their own small tanks. In all, he had
one hundred and ninety five patents registered with the US government,
(08:21):
although none of them ever came close to the success
of Sea Monkeys. One of those patents was very unlike
the others, though, It was a spring loaded baton used
for defense, which was named the Kyoga Agent M five.
The baton had early success when it was used in
the nineteen eighty one Burt Reynolds film Sharky's Machine. It
was another success, albeit a modest one, but it uncovered
(08:44):
and ugly truth about the inventor. Although born into a
Jewish family, it turns out that von broun Hutt was
a rabid white nationalist who had added the Vaughan to
broun Hut to distance himself from his own heritage. In fact,
he used the proceeds from the Kyoga Agent sales initially
on a legal defense fund of one Richard G. Butler,
(09:05):
who happened at the time to be the leader of
the Aryan Nations Group. When Butler included a mention of
von Bronhut's donations, it caused a scandal, and further digging
by national papers discovered that he was well immeshed with
white nationalist causes. He annually attended the Aryan Nations World
Congress and had helped buy firearms for the KKK in Ohio.
(09:26):
His reputation was in tatters, but he abandoned neither his
ties to white nationalists nor his drive to create and
market new inventions. When he died from a fall in
two thousand and three, he was still working on ideas
for a pet lobster and what he called an instant frog.
In following years, the company would be sold, and litigation
over payments to his widow would last for years. By
(09:49):
the end, she was destitute, although Sea Monkeys continued to
sell well under the new ownership. Harold von Bronhut's legacy
is a paradox, a visionary entrepreneur who turned a humble
Brian shrimp egg into a cultural phenomenon, yet whose personal
flaws and covert alliances cast a long, unsettling shadow over
(10:09):
his achievements. In the end, his story serves as a
reminder that brilliance and moral blindness sometimes coexist. Harold wasn't
a good man, but he made something that people loved,
making him a curious example of just how complex and
sometimes horrible human beings can be. I hope you've enjoyed
(10:31):
today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
(10:53):
learn all about it over at the Worldolore dot com.
And until next time, stay curious. Noo.
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
If you've ever worked in any sort of service job,
you've probably heard the phrase the customer is always right.
It's a truism that is hard to believe when you're
dealing with an irate person or someone who simply doesn't
like you, and the saying isn't true in the literal sense.
The customer is rarely actually right all the time. But
the customer is the one with the money, so they're
(00:58):
the one who must be appeased. And if you failed
to do so, you may still hear from a customer
for days, weeks, or months later, especially if they're not
happy with your product or your behavior. To quote one
particularly irate customer complaint, what do you take me for
that you treat me with such contempt. Actually, that's not
something a recent customer said. That's a customer from over
(01:22):
three thousand years ago. I like to take you back
to seventeen fifty BCE to the ancient city states of
Er in ancient Mesopotamia. There a man named Nanni spoke
to a merchant about purchasing some copper ingots. The merchant,
whose name was a Nasir, wasn't just a copper trader.
He also sold textiles and foodstuffs on occasion, but his
(01:44):
primary specialty was copper, at least that's the impression he
gave to Nanni. He assured Nani that he would provide
him with copper of excellent quality as soon as he
got back from del Munn. He made the trip end
Upon his return, he sent word to Nanni that the
copper was ready. Nanni dispatched a servant to pick up
the copper and to pay the merchant for his services.
(02:06):
It should have been a fairly simple transaction. However, when
the servant arrived, he had a far less pleasant interaction
with the merchant than his master had. A Noasir set
the copper before him, and the servant quickly realized that
the ingots were not the right grade that Nanni had requested.
When he pointed this out, Anasir told the servant that
(02:26):
he can take or leave the copper. If he doesn't
want it, then he should get out of his sight.
The servant, not knowing what else to do, paid for
the copper and returned to his master. Hearing what had
happened to his servants by this merchant, Nani was outraged.
He wrote to a Nasir, accusing him of being rude
and callous and demanding that he sent his money back
(02:47):
as he would not accept poor quality copper from him.
And I wish that I could give you more of
this dramatic story, but we know little else about it
because all of the information that we have comes from
the written complaint that Nanni wrote to the merchant a Nasir.
It was on a clay tablet written in Akkadian Kuneiform.
The tablet was unearthed between nineteen twenty two and nineteen
(03:10):
thirty four by an expedition from the British Museum to
modern day Iraq. At around three thousand, seven hundred and
seventy five years old. It's thought to be the oldest
surviving customer complaint in history, and it wasn't the only
one that they found there. The building they found it
in contained several more tablets, also addressed to a nosir.
(03:31):
They were all fairly irate, with some asking about the
status of their orders, about undelivered orders or the copper
they were promised by the merchant. Others were requests for
a batch of copper to pick from. But even if
most of these dozen or so tablets were all annoyed
at this one merchant, none were as thoroughly frustrated as
Nani's message. Will likely never know if a nasir responded
(03:54):
to the storm of messages and complaints and accusations. Archaeologists
seemed to think that his business waned in the later years,
with his house being relatively small compared to other neighboring units.
The fact that he kept all of his customer complaints
implied that they were either from the latter days of
his business or he had a fairly petty nature. Few
of us get to choose the way that we are remembered.
(04:16):
Leaving behind a monument or a tomb is beyond even
the wildest dreams of the ordinary person, so it's curious
to think about how something like a customer complaint can
preserve names across the millennia, to the point where you
can read Nanni's complaint tablet yourself in the British Museum,
or at least a translation of it. We know just
how incensed this man was by the merchant's rudeness, making
(04:40):
the past a little more relatable in spite of the
vast gulf of time between us. It just goes to
show when you treat people rudely, they remember it. Perhaps
a nasir should have remembered the Golden Rule, or well,
maybe in this case we should say the Copper Rule.
(05:09):
A man walks into a pet shop in nineteen fifty
seven and stumbles upon his fortune. It sounds like the
start of some vaudevillian joke, but this is a true
story of a man who took the lowest of creatures
and with them built an empire of novelty, before making
a strange turn that nearly tore it all down. This
man was Harold von Braunhutt, born into a Jewish family
(05:31):
of toymakers in Memphis, Tennessee. In early life he was
something of a daredevil, racing motorcycles under the name the
Green Hornet before taking on clients as a talent agent.
These early forays into entertainment wouldn't pan out, and so
Harold changed his career path, looking for something new, and
so on one fateful day, he walked into that pet
(05:53):
shop where his eyes landed on a bucket that would
change his life forever. The bucket was filled with water,
and it contained thousands upon thousands of tiny, little swimmers.
They were Brian shrimp, which are a type of crustacean.
Brian shrimp, whose scientific name is Artemia selina, are a
species who have evolved to live inland in brine pools
(06:13):
and other salty inland waters. They're very small, the largest
of them grow only to about fifteen millimeters in length.
In nature, the tiny arthropods serve an important function in
their ecosystem. They eat green algae and so keep the
waters clean, and then they serve as food for migrating birds.
They've remained little changed since they appeared in the Triassic
(06:34):
period two hundred and fifty million years ago, and Harold
was fascinated by the tiny creatures. But what got his
imagination reeling was a curious biological trait. Their eggs are
capable of survival of up to two years out of water,
and are resistant to both heat and cold. This survival
mechanism made them perfect for shipping long distances. Harold saw
(06:56):
potential in these shrimp and hired a marine biologist to
breed the Brian shrimp to best endure shipping conditions. They
were sold in small kits, complete with packets which included
the desiccated eggs, an agent to purify the water and salt,
and instructions to create the perfect environment for the shrimp
to thrive. And he branded them as sea monkeys and
(07:17):
hired well known cartoonist Joe Orlando to design all new advertisements.
These ads showed a fantastical underwater wonderland with a family
of anthropomorphized pink Brian shrimp smiling up from the page.
They looked nothing like the product that would arrive to
eager children's doors, but that mattered very little to sales,
which skyrocketed as the first ads were released in nineteen
(07:40):
sixty four. And as a side note, as a kid
growing up in the eighties who frequented yard sales where
boxes of old comic books were sold, I distinctly remembered
these ads over and over again in almost every issue
I read, and as you'd imagine, Sea Monkeys became a
smash success, with sales rivaling ant farms and so Harold
(08:00):
used the same type of marketing for all new inventions,
selling a seemingly endless line of novelty toys, including X
ray specs, which ensnared the adolescent mind with promises of
seeing through clothing, and Crazy Crabs, which were hermit crabs
sold with their own small tanks. In all, he had
one hundred and ninety five patents registered with the US government,
(08:21):
although none of them ever came close to the success
of Sea Monkeys. One of those patents was very unlike
the others, though, It was a spring loaded baton used
for defense, which was named the Kyoga Agent M five.
The baton had early success when it was used in
the nineteen eighty one Burt Reynolds film Sharky's Machine. It
was another success, albeit a modest one, but it uncovered
(08:44):
and ugly truth about the inventor. Although born into a
Jewish family, it turns out that von broun Hutt was
a rabid white nationalist who had added the Vaughan to
broun Hut to distance himself from his own heritage. In fact,
he used the proceeds from the Kyoga Agent sales initially
on a legal defense fund of one Richard G. Butler,
(09:05):
who happened at the time to be the leader of
the Aryan Nations Group. When Butler included a mention of
von Bronhut's donations, it caused a scandal, and further digging
by national papers discovered that he was well immeshed with
white nationalist causes. He annually attended the Aryan Nations World
Congress and had helped buy firearms for the KKK in Ohio.
(09:26):
His reputation was in tatters, but he abandoned neither his
ties to white nationalists nor his drive to create and
market new inventions. When he died from a fall in
two thousand and three, he was still working on ideas
for a pet lobster and what he called an instant frog.
In following years, the company would be sold, and litigation
over payments to his widow would last for years. By
(09:49):
the end, she was destitute, although Sea Monkeys continued to
sell well under the new ownership. Harold von Bronhut's legacy
is a paradox, a visionary entrepreneur who turned a humble
Brian shrimp egg into a cultural phenomenon, yet whose personal
flaws and covert alliances cast a long, unsettling shadow over
(10:09):
his achievements. In the end, his story serves as a
reminder that brilliance and moral blindness sometimes coexist. Harold wasn't
a good man, but he made something that people loved,
making him a curious example of just how complex and
sometimes horrible human beings can be. I hope you've enjoyed
(10:31):
today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
(10:53):
learn all about it over at the Worldolore dot com.
And until next time, stay curious. Noo.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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