July 13, 2023 • 23 mins
The history of Dr. Bronner’s soap is even crazier than the famously crazy writing on the side of a Dr. Bronner’s soap bottle. The company was founded by a man who escaped from a mental asylum. Now it is the top-selling natural soap brand in North America. How did this happen? Carrie Battan paid their headquarters a visit to find out.
You can read Carrie Battan’s GQ story, “Is Dr. Bronner’s the Last Corporation With a Soul,” here: https://www.gq.com/story/dr-bronners-corporate-success
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm Carrie Batton, and I wrote is Doctor Bronner is
the last corporation with the soul for GQ magazine and
it is the story of the week.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Okay, tell everyone who you are.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
I've heard that on MPR before. I'm your lovely wife.
Your name though, Cassandra Berry, and you are your lovely
wife the luckiest personalies. Yes, so you may remember this,
but I used to use a certain kind of soap
in the shower. Oh I remember, Yeah, but I've stopped. Yes,
you got medical advice. I did from a well respected physician.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
What did she tell you?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
So? I was having recurring uti and your doctor how
what I thought was a pretty weird request.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Pretty quickly she mentioned, is your husband washing himself with?
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Doctor Bronner's preferment was And I was like, are you
sleeping with my husband?
Speaker 2 (01:09):
How would you possibly know that my husband is addicted?
Speaker 3 (01:13):
It was an addicted my soap of choice.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
It was a staple of our shower. Yes, but apparently
it causes irritation.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Not for me.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
So.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
But the theory is that just by being on my
body hours earlier, it's so powerful the peppermint yeah, that
it could then irritate you indirectly hours later.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Look, it's the only soap she name checked.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Well, I haven't used it for like a year.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
Now.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
It's forbidden. It's forbidden in this house, although you are
actually free to use it on any part of your body,
just not your penis.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Oh really, writing is hard.
Speaker 5 (01:57):
Who's got that kind of time when you're already busy
trying to be jon stanned?
Speaker 1 (02:02):
So it turns on a mic?
Speaker 5 (02:04):
Maybe twiddles Enop calls a journalist Frand has got in
that jewel John pies single story. Just listen to smart
people speak, conversation, film and information is the story of.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
All. Too often I find out that some company I
like is run by people with evil agendas. This time, however,
I discovered that a product I love is run by
completely insane people and has been for generations. Carrie Batton
looked into the crazy history of Doctor Browner soap for
GQ magazine. Carrie, this might be a personal question, but
(02:54):
what soap do you use?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
What soap do I use? I use Dove. I have
historically used Dove Bar soap.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
The most popular soap by far in our country.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
It is true, and yet I will say that since
I started reporting on the Bronner Family. I have switched
over to doctor Bronner's Peppermint.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Soap Wow, which is must be a shocker, right, that's
a real change in your morning.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yes, I think I might want to switch to the
almond because the peppermint can be a little bit intense.
I don't know if you have have used it or not,
but I have.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
And in personal areas it can really wake you up.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
It certainly can.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Just in case our listeners don't have any hippi friends,
what is doctor Bronner's soap?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Well, I don't think you need to have hippie friends
in order to know what doctor Bronner's soap. In fact,
Gwyneth Paltrow and Megan Markle are loyal patrons of the brand.
But Doctor Bronner's is a sort of iconic soap brand
that dates way back to the nineteen forties, founded by
doctor Emmanuel Bronner, and the original product was this extremely minty, powerful,
(04:05):
all natural, all purpose soap that was working on and
not toxic et cetera.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
So the soap was created by this guy, Immanuel Bronner,
who was he.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
So Emanuel Bronner is a truly eccentric German American entrepreneur
who came from a long line of soap makers in Germany,
and he emigrated to the United States in the late
nineteen twenties from Nazi Germany.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
It wasn't Nazi Germany yet, right in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Well no, I mean no, it wasn't. But his parents
were later killed in concentration camps, and he was very
impacted by World War Two.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Wait, so why do you leave?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
I don't think that the family has too much history
on exactly why he left. He decamped for the United States.
I think, you know, with the same immigrant dreams that
a lot of people have of just you know, the
American dream.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Does he have dreams of building like a soap empire?
Speaker 5 (05:07):
No?
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Not.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Initially he came to the United States and he was
actually institutionalized in Chicago.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Yes, what could you do in the nineteen thirties that
could get you institutionalized?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
I don't think that sort of like loudly screaming about
how you want to unite the human race. Really, it
must not have gone over too well back then.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
He's like a manic street preachers.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Yeah, exactly, Uh huh. I think there were there were
certainly some elements of mania there. And also you know
he adopted the honorific doctor. He wasn't a real doctor.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Well, he's the whole doctor. Bronis is built on a lie.
He does not have a medical degree.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
He does not have a medical degree.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
No, he was why would you call yourself doctor?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Uh, that that would be what you would have to agree,
drop acid and ask his ghost why that's real? Reporting, Yeah, exactly,
And then he escaped the mental institution. He'd literally literally escaped,
literally escaped.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Like broke out of a window somewhere.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
And uh yeah, literally escaped.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
And then went back to madic street preaching of Guessie.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
He went to southern California, where his ideas seemingly were
a little bit better received. He didn't want to have
a soap brand so much as he wanted to kind
of profess this idea about uniting the human race. So
he was like, Okay, I'll start making soap and then
I will print a label with all of my ideas
that people will be forced to read.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
We have a clip of Emmanuel later in his life.
It's from this documentary Doctor Browner's Magic Soapbox. So he's
sitting shirtless by the pool in Florida. He looks like
he weighs eighty pounds and has never left the sun
in his life. Do you want to listen to that
with me?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah? Absolutely, I would love to hear that.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
I'm so mega master Chemists, Doctor Emmanuel H. Pranam. What
causes all the trouble and deserves the past two thousand
years is a lack of rabbis, a fight year of
rabbis to teach every twelve year old boy on God, Spice, Ship, Earth, Moral, ABC,
the outage, none, so life free.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I'm not sold.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
You're not sold on the ideas or that doesn't make
you want to buy soap.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I might buy soap maybe, but I'm definitely not. Like
he's not gonna be my guru. I'm not going to
join that religion.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Right. People were skeptical of it, so they wouldn't. He
was giving away bottles of soap for free if they
came and watched him lecture in various auditoriums, and a
lot of people were showing up and taking their free
soap and leaving because they liked the soap better than
they liked what he was saying.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Can you explain what his religion or beliefs are.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
At the end of the day, it sounds really convoluted
and complex, but if you boil it all down, it's extremely,
almost childlike in its simplicity, which is just that we
are all one human race and we're better together than
a part et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Yeah, so all this stuff is written in tiny print
on every soap. Everyone seems to ignore the insanity on
the label and just pretend it's some kind of graphic design.
But the label that I read always talks about the
moral abcs, and because the designs so insane, I can't
figuret what they are.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah, you know, I'm actually going to grab my bottle.
I haven't actually read the moral abcs in a while.
Now I'm realizing the moral abcs are not actually ABC's,
that it is a numbered list. For example, number.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
The moral ABC's are not a B and C.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
No, it's you know, it's a numbered list.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Why wouldn't it be the moral one? Two threes?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
These are the tough questions that I could not get
to and in my reporting. But no, but number one
is if I'm not for me, who am I nobody?
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Number two yet, if I'm only for me? What am
I nothing? If not now then when once more, unless
constructive selfish, I work hard, perfecting first me. Absolutely nothing
can help perfect me. So you can see how it's
a little bit difficult to parse.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
God even in the shower where you've got free times.
That's a tough reed.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
It is a bit of a tough reed.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yeah, but it becomes this incredibly successful number one natural
soap in America. How does that happen?
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, it took off in the sixties in southern California
and on the East Coast as well. But like you know,
something about doctor Barner's messaging really resonated in that kind
of countercultural moment. And that was a time when there were, like,
you know, Trader Joe's was becoming a thing, Doctor Bragg's
apple cider vinegar was becoming popular. It was like the
(09:45):
natural health food boom, and I think doctor Barner's kind
of got lumped into that wave. It didn't quite explode
until Minuel Broner's two sons, and a few years later
his grandsons took over the company.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
I'm realizing what a bad business plan selling soap to
hippies is. It's like selling Beard trimmers to hippies.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
I totally agree with you. In the short term, it's
a very stupid, but I think in the long term
it actually was really smart because the hippies eventually kind
of grew up and they sort of went back into
normy culture, and you know, doctor Bronner's was the relic
from their hippie time.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah, so tell me a little more about this second
generation of Bronner's after Emmanuel. Who are they?
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, the second generation of Bronner's are Jim Bronner and
Ralph Bronner. Ralph was sort of the kooky marketing mind.
He would go around and just hand out, you know,
bottles of soap to people in the same way that
his father did. And then Jim was kind of the
rigorous chemist, mad scientist.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
And did they believe in the ABC religion.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
I think Ralph probably did more than Jim. I think
they were both wrestling with a lot of the bitterness
they were feeling towards their own childhood, you know, in
sort of proselytizing and spreading this message around the country
and developing the soap company. He abandoned his children when
they were young. They were all in the foster system.
It seems like they had some some serious blocks against
(11:16):
the ABC's and the messages on the label.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Have they passed away or are they still around?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Those two brothers, Yeah, they've both passed away. Jim died
in the late nineties of cancer and then that's when
his sons came in and took over.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
When we come back, we'll go into the headquarters of
Doctor Browner Soap and find out it's gotten even weirder
than it first started. But first, our sales team is
going to sell you some concentrated cranberry juice pills for
your UTF. So, who's running Doctor Bronner's now? It's in
(11:55):
its third generation.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Yes, it's in its third generation. So the CEO of
the company is David Browner, who is the eldest grandson
of Emmanuel Browner. And then his young brother Michael is
also at the executive level, and their mother, Trudy is
the CFO. It's a real family affair.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
The CEO David Bronner.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
What's he like, Yeah, so he's about fifty. I think
you'll understand a lot about him by learning that CEO
does not stand for in his case, chief executive officer.
It is cosmic Engagement officer.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Is that literally on his IRS filings, like he has
to yes, yes, yes, yes, they must love that.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Yeah. David Bronner is a mad genius. He is a
enthusiast when it comes to psychedelic drugs and psychedelic experiences.
I would classify him as a hippie. He had like
a psychedelic awakening while he was a student at Harvard,
you know, started to learn all about drug reform and
criminal justice.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
So this is some guy you you definitely knew while
you were in college.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Oh yeah, totally, totally. I knew many of these guys,
and it's always like you do you do anything with them,
hang out with them, and then like eventually you're just
kind of waiting for the conversation to circle back to
psychedelics and to be like, well, should we trip now,
And you're like, no, I have class in five minutes.
That's a little bit what David Bronner's is. But to
(13:23):
give him a little bit of credit, he did transform
his own interest in taking psychedelics and tripping. He did
the work of researching them, doing a lot of work
with veterans groups and with psychiatric groups about like their
therapeutic benefits and lobbying for them politically, which is a
huge part of doctor Bronner's today.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
I remembers like ten years ago, the New York Times
had a picture on the front page which was David
Bronner in a cage in front of the White House
and he was protesting. I think it was just legalization
in marijuana. But the cops were like cutting the bars
of the cage to take him out of the rest
of them.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Yeah, he still does that, still does what. He still
protests the DEA for various precedd injustices. You know, I
think he would even admit that it's a little bit
of stunt marketing for doctor Bronner's.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
And you said they are a pretty ethical company. Does
that apply to like how much they pay their workers
as well?
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah. So one really important thing they do that almost
no American corporations do is they have an executive salary cap.
Each executive can only make, I believe, at maximum five
times the amount that the lowest paid employee makes, so
it's it's capped at three hundred thousand dollars, which means
(14:45):
that the minimum lowest paid salary is sixty thousand dollars annually.
Plus really really really good healthcare and I think maybe
even some childcare benefits, really really good paid sick leave,
paid time off, free access to various types of therapy,
including ketamine therapy. You know, there's just like it is
very like modern tech corporation benefits and but for very
(15:11):
physical manufacturing jobs.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
And one thing that I loved in your story was
that they fund a hotline for people to call if
they're having a bad trip. I didn't know that existed.
That's tremendous.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Yeah, no, they do. And they also I believe they
have a you know how in burning Man. I guess
there's like all these tents and kind of spaces you
can go to if you're having a bad experience. I
think they're involved with a lot of those too. They're
really invested in making sure people have have good psychedelic experiences.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
I'm confused on their politics because they're also or their
mom is like a Christian kind of conservative, Reaganite kind
of person.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Yeah. Not only is their mom a Christian Conservative, their
brother in law Michael Milam, who is CEO, he is
also a Christian Conservative. And their grandfather, doctor Emanuel Browner,
was a Zionist. He was Jewish. But I think in
their minds, all of these kind of disparate impulses make
them sort of stronger and more humanistic because they're able
(16:15):
to reconcile all of them in the name of, you know,
their various causes.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
So you went to their headquarters, which are like near
San Diego, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
They're in a town called Vista, California, which is about
twenty five minutes from San Diego.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
What's what's the place like?
Speaker 2 (16:35):
I don't know if you've ever seen a suburban corporate
office park, it's just like literally the most generic possible
thing you can imagine. And I was like, man, this
is so disappointing, like this is where, this is where
doctor Brown's is. But then I kind of as I
got closer and closer, I was like, oh, like, here's
this solar paneled parking lot with a zillion electric car chargers.
(16:56):
And then I heard music blasting and it was like
disco and funk coming from this fire truck. And there
was a group of maybe twelve or fifteen people in
kind of like overalls and kooky hats and blowing bubble
and smiling and waving at anyone who came through the
front door, and I was like, okay, so here, I
think I'm at the right place. So Doctor Browners has
(17:18):
a division called the Magic Film Experience, and so this
team of people are kind of they ride this fire
truck which is equipped with foam. They foam people at
pride parades, and they go to burning.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Man Or did you get phoned?
Speaker 4 (17:31):
Ah?
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yes, I did more than getting phoned. I did a
lot of foaming, and I would I think I'd prefer
to foam other people than to be foamed. It's a
very powerful feeling.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Wow, you should talk to your therapist about that.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah, right, right, there's some Freudian dynamics there.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
But were they out there to greet you or are
they just normally out there?
Speaker 2 (17:53):
So that the day that I went was the day
of a new employee onboarding, so they were there to
greet all of the new employees.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
What is it like to be a new employee at
Doctor Browner's.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Most of these new employees they were like packaging specialists
and shipping and sales, and they were coming in and
being kind of sold this lifestyle. I have to imagine
it's a little bit of a trip for them to
get into that.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Right, because They're not like burning man people. They're people
that work at a factory. What are the people who
work there?
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Like, Yeah, I mean San Diego has a large Catholic
Mexican American population, of course, so that's who most of
the new employees were.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
So you're there on employee orientation day and who greeted
the employees? Like, who's running orientation?
Speaker 2 (18:45):
The foamy homies? Who are the employees who make up
the Magic Foam Experience?
Speaker 1 (18:51):
That's their full time job.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Yeah, as their full time job. They are vibe creators.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Wow, So they're blasted with foam And do they then
have like a normal first day experience or what's the
rest of their day?
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Like?
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Well, so it's several hours of initiation where in this
conference room with quotes from Emmanuel Bronner painted on the walls,
they get told the entire family history by David and
Michael Bronner and Trudy Bronner, their mom, and then they
are prompted to, you know, tell the group about themselves.
They performed their favorite dance and they were like talking
(19:28):
about their favorite sports and their you know, just just
sort of like this Kumbaya sharing circle. I was certainly
like good God, I really hope they do not make
me participated in these games.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
You didn't have to do your favorite dance?
Speaker 2 (19:43):
No, I don't. I think I would have left if
they if they had asked me to do that.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Do you have a favorite dance?
Speaker 2 (19:48):
No, no, they don't. I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Mine is one hundred percent of the Running Man. I
would have definitely broke out Running Man.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Okay, there was some running Man going on. People were
doing like the lawnmower or the sprinkler, the macarena.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Like you know, if you have a cosmic engagement officer
who's caging himself in front of the White House and
working out legalizing ketamine, how is this business so successful?
Speaker 2 (20:12):
I think, like a all of this stuff is great marketing.
It has kept this level of kind of bemused attention
on Doctor Bronner's the company for a really long time.
And then everybody wants to seem like an ethical company
these days, and I think Doctor Bronner's was already so
far ahead in these ideas of what an ethical company
(20:32):
is that they were sort of there to catch that wave.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Did reporting the story give you hope for the future
of capitalism?
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I mean it didn't give me hope for the future
of capitalism. But it did sort of open my eyes
to like, Okay, this is possible. You don't have to
have like corporate bonuses in excess of hundreds of millions
of dollars a year. Like people can like live really
well off of a fairly moderate income and actually free
(21:00):
up so much money for their employees to be happy
and make a good product.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Until the price of ketamine skyrockets, at which point David
rethinks this whole thing. Yeah right, Carrie Baton, you wrote
is Doctor Bronner's the Last Corporation with the soul for GQ,
and it's the story of the week. Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Thank you, Joel. I appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Oh my god, did you learn that from Doctor Bronner's.
That's so great.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
I know.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
I appreciate you too. I've read James Joyce's Ulysses, I've
read Emmanuel cons a prolegoma to any future metaphysics, But
I've never read something as hard to understand as the
label on Doctor Bronner's eighteen and one Hemp peppermint pure
castile soap. First, let me inform you that the label
(21:47):
clearly lists ten, not eighteen uses really ten. It name
checks Jesus, Hallel, Mohammed, Confucius, spaceships, and many many times
Thomas Paine. It also espouses a really unique form of
birth control which apparently works like this, and I quote
(22:11):
apply vasoline, oil, butter or cream, insert teaspoon, juicy lemon
pulp pH two. God's Law prevents conception one hundred percent
below pH three. Next day douche with court soapy water,
pH eight restoring pH five balance God made we officially
(22:34):
at the podcast recommend using a condom. Oh and one
other part that seems crucially important is covered by large
texts that says thirty two fluid ounces nine hundred and
forty six mili liters and yes, the whole time I've
been reading this, I've been completely naked.
Speaker 5 (22:55):
At the end of the show, what's next for joel Stein?
Maybe you'll take a naper poker round online.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Our show Today was produced by Joey fish Ground, Kate
McAuliffe and Nishavenkat. It was edited by Lydia g Our
engineer is a Manda ky Wang and our executive producer
is Catherine Shira Dau And our theme song was written
and performed by Jonathan Colton and a special thanks to
my voice coach Vicky Merrick and my consulting producer Laurence Alasnik.
(23:25):
To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm
Joel Stein and this is the story of the week.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Doesn't that peppermint soap seem like it's killing germs?
Speaker 1 (23:40):
It's killing more than germs. My wife's ob gyn told
me I had to stop using it because it could
cause you t eyes.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
That's good to know. I didn't know that.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
I don't know if that's true, but that's what she said.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Maybe your wife's ob gyn is in the pocket of
Big Dove.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm Carrie Batton, and I wrote is Doctor Bronner is
the last corporation with the soul for GQ magazine and
it is the story of the week.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Okay, tell everyone who you are.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
I've heard that on MPR before. I'm your lovely wife.
Your name though, Cassandra Berry, and you are your lovely
wife the luckiest personalies. Yes, so you may remember this,
but I used to use a certain kind of soap
in the shower. Oh I remember, Yeah, but I've stopped. Yes,
you got medical advice. I did from a well respected physician.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
What did she tell you?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
So? I was having recurring uti and your doctor how
what I thought was a pretty weird request.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Pretty quickly she mentioned, is your husband washing himself with?
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Doctor Bronner's preferment was And I was like, are you
sleeping with my husband?
Speaker 2 (01:09):
How would you possibly know that my husband is addicted?
Speaker 3 (01:13):
It was an addicted my soap of choice.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
It was a staple of our shower. Yes, but apparently
it causes irritation.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Not for me.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
So.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
But the theory is that just by being on my
body hours earlier, it's so powerful the peppermint yeah, that
it could then irritate you indirectly hours later.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Look, it's the only soap she name checked.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Well, I haven't used it for like a year.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
Now.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
It's forbidden. It's forbidden in this house, although you are
actually free to use it on any part of your body,
just not your penis.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Oh really, writing is hard.
Speaker 5 (01:57):
Who's got that kind of time when you're already busy
trying to be jon stanned?
Speaker 1 (02:02):
So it turns on a mic?
Speaker 5 (02:04):
Maybe twiddles Enop calls a journalist Frand has got in
that jewel John pies single story. Just listen to smart
people speak, conversation, film and information is the story of.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
All. Too often I find out that some company I
like is run by people with evil agendas. This time, however,
I discovered that a product I love is run by
completely insane people and has been for generations. Carrie Batton
looked into the crazy history of Doctor Browner soap for
GQ magazine. Carrie, this might be a personal question, but
(02:54):
what soap do you use?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
What soap do I use? I use Dove. I have
historically used Dove Bar soap.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
The most popular soap by far in our country.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
It is true, and yet I will say that since
I started reporting on the Bronner Family. I have switched
over to doctor Bronner's Peppermint.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Soap Wow, which is must be a shocker, right, that's
a real change in your morning.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yes, I think I might want to switch to the
almond because the peppermint can be a little bit intense.
I don't know if you have have used it or not,
but I have.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
And in personal areas it can really wake you up.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
It certainly can.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Just in case our listeners don't have any hippi friends,
what is doctor Bronner's soap?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Well, I don't think you need to have hippie friends
in order to know what doctor Bronner's soap. In fact,
Gwyneth Paltrow and Megan Markle are loyal patrons of the brand.
But Doctor Bronner's is a sort of iconic soap brand
that dates way back to the nineteen forties, founded by
doctor Emmanuel Bronner, and the original product was this extremely minty, powerful,
(04:05):
all natural, all purpose soap that was working on and
not toxic et cetera.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
So the soap was created by this guy, Immanuel Bronner,
who was he.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
So Emanuel Bronner is a truly eccentric German American entrepreneur
who came from a long line of soap makers in Germany,
and he emigrated to the United States in the late
nineteen twenties from Nazi Germany.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
It wasn't Nazi Germany yet, right in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Well no, I mean no, it wasn't. But his parents
were later killed in concentration camps, and he was very
impacted by World War Two.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Wait, so why do you leave?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
I don't think that the family has too much history
on exactly why he left. He decamped for the United States.
I think, you know, with the same immigrant dreams that
a lot of people have of just you know, the
American dream.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Does he have dreams of building like a soap empire?
Speaker 5 (05:07):
No?
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Not.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Initially he came to the United States and he was
actually institutionalized in Chicago.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Yes, what could you do in the nineteen thirties that
could get you institutionalized?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
I don't think that sort of like loudly screaming about
how you want to unite the human race. Really, it
must not have gone over too well back then.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
He's like a manic street preachers.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Yeah, exactly, Uh huh. I think there were there were
certainly some elements of mania there. And also you know
he adopted the honorific doctor. He wasn't a real doctor.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Well, he's the whole doctor. Bronis is built on a lie.
He does not have a medical degree.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
He does not have a medical degree.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
No, he was why would you call yourself doctor?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Uh, that that would be what you would have to agree,
drop acid and ask his ghost why that's real? Reporting, Yeah, exactly,
And then he escaped the mental institution. He'd literally literally escaped,
literally escaped.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Like broke out of a window somewhere.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
And uh yeah, literally escaped.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
And then went back to madic street preaching of Guessie.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
He went to southern California, where his ideas seemingly were
a little bit better received. He didn't want to have
a soap brand so much as he wanted to kind
of profess this idea about uniting the human race. So
he was like, Okay, I'll start making soap and then
I will print a label with all of my ideas
that people will be forced to read.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
We have a clip of Emmanuel later in his life.
It's from this documentary Doctor Browner's Magic Soapbox. So he's
sitting shirtless by the pool in Florida. He looks like
he weighs eighty pounds and has never left the sun
in his life. Do you want to listen to that
with me?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah? Absolutely, I would love to hear that.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
I'm so mega master Chemists, Doctor Emmanuel H. Pranam. What
causes all the trouble and deserves the past two thousand
years is a lack of rabbis, a fight year of
rabbis to teach every twelve year old boy on God, Spice, Ship, Earth, Moral, ABC,
the outage, none, so life free.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I'm not sold.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
You're not sold on the ideas or that doesn't make
you want to buy soap.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I might buy soap maybe, but I'm definitely not. Like
he's not gonna be my guru. I'm not going to
join that religion.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Right. People were skeptical of it, so they wouldn't. He
was giving away bottles of soap for free if they
came and watched him lecture in various auditoriums, and a
lot of people were showing up and taking their free
soap and leaving because they liked the soap better than
they liked what he was saying.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Can you explain what his religion or beliefs are.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
At the end of the day, it sounds really convoluted
and complex, but if you boil it all down, it's extremely,
almost childlike in its simplicity, which is just that we
are all one human race and we're better together than
a part et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Yeah, so all this stuff is written in tiny print
on every soap. Everyone seems to ignore the insanity on
the label and just pretend it's some kind of graphic design.
But the label that I read always talks about the
moral abcs, and because the designs so insane, I can't
figuret what they are.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah, you know, I'm actually going to grab my bottle.
I haven't actually read the moral abcs in a while.
Now I'm realizing the moral abcs are not actually ABC's,
that it is a numbered list. For example, number.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
The moral ABC's are not a B and C.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
No, it's you know, it's a numbered list.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Why wouldn't it be the moral one? Two threes?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
These are the tough questions that I could not get
to and in my reporting. But no, but number one
is if I'm not for me, who am I nobody?
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Number two yet, if I'm only for me? What am
I nothing? If not now then when once more, unless
constructive selfish, I work hard, perfecting first me. Absolutely nothing
can help perfect me. So you can see how it's
a little bit difficult to parse.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
God even in the shower where you've got free times.
That's a tough reed.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
It is a bit of a tough reed.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yeah, but it becomes this incredibly successful number one natural
soap in America. How does that happen?
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, it took off in the sixties in southern California
and on the East Coast as well. But like you know,
something about doctor Barner's messaging really resonated in that kind
of countercultural moment. And that was a time when there were, like,
you know, Trader Joe's was becoming a thing, Doctor Bragg's
apple cider vinegar was becoming popular. It was like the
(09:45):
natural health food boom, and I think doctor Barner's kind
of got lumped into that wave. It didn't quite explode
until Minuel Broner's two sons, and a few years later
his grandsons took over the company.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
I'm realizing what a bad business plan selling soap to
hippies is. It's like selling Beard trimmers to hippies.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
I totally agree with you. In the short term, it's
a very stupid, but I think in the long term
it actually was really smart because the hippies eventually kind
of grew up and they sort of went back into
normy culture, and you know, doctor Bronner's was the relic
from their hippie time.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah, so tell me a little more about this second
generation of Bronner's after Emmanuel. Who are they?
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, the second generation of Bronner's are Jim Bronner and
Ralph Bronner. Ralph was sort of the kooky marketing mind.
He would go around and just hand out, you know,
bottles of soap to people in the same way that
his father did. And then Jim was kind of the
rigorous chemist, mad scientist.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
And did they believe in the ABC religion.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
I think Ralph probably did more than Jim. I think
they were both wrestling with a lot of the bitterness
they were feeling towards their own childhood, you know, in
sort of proselytizing and spreading this message around the country
and developing the soap company. He abandoned his children when
they were young. They were all in the foster system.
It seems like they had some some serious blocks against
(11:16):
the ABC's and the messages on the label.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Have they passed away or are they still around?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Those two brothers, Yeah, they've both passed away. Jim died
in the late nineties of cancer and then that's when
his sons came in and took over.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
When we come back, we'll go into the headquarters of
Doctor Browner Soap and find out it's gotten even weirder
than it first started. But first, our sales team is
going to sell you some concentrated cranberry juice pills for
your UTF. So, who's running Doctor Bronner's now? It's in
(11:55):
its third generation.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Yes, it's in its third generation. So the CEO of
the company is David Browner, who is the eldest grandson
of Emmanuel Browner. And then his young brother Michael is
also at the executive level, and their mother, Trudy is
the CFO. It's a real family affair.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
The CEO David Bronner.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
What's he like, Yeah, so he's about fifty. I think
you'll understand a lot about him by learning that CEO
does not stand for in his case, chief executive officer.
It is cosmic Engagement officer.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Is that literally on his IRS filings, like he has
to yes, yes, yes, yes, they must love that.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Yeah. David Bronner is a mad genius. He is a
enthusiast when it comes to psychedelic drugs and psychedelic experiences.
I would classify him as a hippie. He had like
a psychedelic awakening while he was a student at Harvard,
you know, started to learn all about drug reform and
criminal justice.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
So this is some guy you you definitely knew while
you were in college.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Oh yeah, totally, totally. I knew many of these guys,
and it's always like you do you do anything with them,
hang out with them, and then like eventually you're just
kind of waiting for the conversation to circle back to
psychedelics and to be like, well, should we trip now,
And you're like, no, I have class in five minutes.
That's a little bit what David Bronner's is. But to
(13:23):
give him a little bit of credit, he did transform
his own interest in taking psychedelics and tripping. He did
the work of researching them, doing a lot of work
with veterans groups and with psychiatric groups about like their
therapeutic benefits and lobbying for them politically, which is a
huge part of doctor Bronner's today.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
I remembers like ten years ago, the New York Times
had a picture on the front page which was David
Bronner in a cage in front of the White House
and he was protesting. I think it was just legalization
in marijuana. But the cops were like cutting the bars
of the cage to take him out of the rest
of them.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Yeah, he still does that, still does what. He still
protests the DEA for various precedd injustices. You know, I
think he would even admit that it's a little bit
of stunt marketing for doctor Bronner's.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
And you said they are a pretty ethical company. Does
that apply to like how much they pay their workers
as well?
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah. So one really important thing they do that almost
no American corporations do is they have an executive salary cap.
Each executive can only make, I believe, at maximum five
times the amount that the lowest paid employee makes, so
it's it's capped at three hundred thousand dollars, which means
(14:45):
that the minimum lowest paid salary is sixty thousand dollars annually.
Plus really really really good healthcare and I think maybe
even some childcare benefits, really really good paid sick leave,
paid time off, free access to various types of therapy,
including ketamine therapy. You know, there's just like it is
very like modern tech corporation benefits and but for very
(15:11):
physical manufacturing jobs.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
And one thing that I loved in your story was
that they fund a hotline for people to call if
they're having a bad trip. I didn't know that existed.
That's tremendous.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Yeah, no, they do. And they also I believe they
have a you know how in burning Man. I guess
there's like all these tents and kind of spaces you
can go to if you're having a bad experience. I
think they're involved with a lot of those too. They're
really invested in making sure people have have good psychedelic experiences.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
I'm confused on their politics because they're also or their
mom is like a Christian kind of conservative, Reaganite kind
of person.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Yeah. Not only is their mom a Christian Conservative, their
brother in law Michael Milam, who is CEO, he is
also a Christian Conservative. And their grandfather, doctor Emanuel Browner,
was a Zionist. He was Jewish. But I think in
their minds, all of these kind of disparate impulses make
them sort of stronger and more humanistic because they're able
(16:15):
to reconcile all of them in the name of, you know,
their various causes.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
So you went to their headquarters, which are like near
San Diego, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
They're in a town called Vista, California, which is about
twenty five minutes from San Diego.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
What's what's the place like?
Speaker 2 (16:35):
I don't know if you've ever seen a suburban corporate
office park, it's just like literally the most generic possible
thing you can imagine. And I was like, man, this
is so disappointing, like this is where, this is where
doctor Brown's is. But then I kind of as I
got closer and closer, I was like, oh, like, here's
this solar paneled parking lot with a zillion electric car chargers.
(16:56):
And then I heard music blasting and it was like
disco and funk coming from this fire truck. And there
was a group of maybe twelve or fifteen people in
kind of like overalls and kooky hats and blowing bubble
and smiling and waving at anyone who came through the
front door, and I was like, okay, so here, I
think I'm at the right place. So Doctor Browners has
(17:18):
a division called the Magic Film Experience, and so this
team of people are kind of they ride this fire
truck which is equipped with foam. They foam people at
pride parades, and they go to burning.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Man Or did you get phoned?
Speaker 4 (17:31):
Ah?
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yes, I did more than getting phoned. I did a
lot of foaming, and I would I think I'd prefer
to foam other people than to be foamed. It's a
very powerful feeling.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Wow, you should talk to your therapist about that.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah, right, right, there's some Freudian dynamics there.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
But were they out there to greet you or are
they just normally out there?
Speaker 2 (17:53):
So that the day that I went was the day
of a new employee onboarding, so they were there to
greet all of the new employees.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
What is it like to be a new employee at
Doctor Browner's.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Most of these new employees they were like packaging specialists
and shipping and sales, and they were coming in and
being kind of sold this lifestyle. I have to imagine
it's a little bit of a trip for them to
get into that.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Right, because They're not like burning man people. They're people
that work at a factory. What are the people who
work there?
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Like, Yeah, I mean San Diego has a large Catholic
Mexican American population, of course, so that's who most of
the new employees were.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
So you're there on employee orientation day and who greeted
the employees? Like, who's running orientation?
Speaker 2 (18:45):
The foamy homies? Who are the employees who make up
the Magic Foam Experience?
Speaker 1 (18:51):
That's their full time job.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Yeah, as their full time job. They are vibe creators.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Wow, So they're blasted with foam And do they then
have like a normal first day experience or what's the
rest of their day?
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Like?
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Well, so it's several hours of initiation where in this
conference room with quotes from Emmanuel Bronner painted on the walls,
they get told the entire family history by David and
Michael Bronner and Trudy Bronner, their mom, and then they
are prompted to, you know, tell the group about themselves.
They performed their favorite dance and they were like talking
(19:28):
about their favorite sports and their you know, just just
sort of like this Kumbaya sharing circle. I was certainly
like good God, I really hope they do not make
me participated in these games.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
You didn't have to do your favorite dance?
Speaker 2 (19:43):
No, I don't. I think I would have left if
they if they had asked me to do that.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Do you have a favorite dance?
Speaker 2 (19:48):
No, no, they don't. I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Mine is one hundred percent of the Running Man. I
would have definitely broke out Running Man.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Okay, there was some running Man going on. People were
doing like the lawnmower or the sprinkler, the macarena.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Like you know, if you have a cosmic engagement officer
who's caging himself in front of the White House and
working out legalizing ketamine, how is this business so successful?
Speaker 2 (20:12):
I think, like a all of this stuff is great marketing.
It has kept this level of kind of bemused attention
on Doctor Bronner's the company for a really long time.
And then everybody wants to seem like an ethical company
these days, and I think Doctor Bronner's was already so
far ahead in these ideas of what an ethical company
(20:32):
is that they were sort of there to catch that wave.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Did reporting the story give you hope for the future
of capitalism?
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I mean it didn't give me hope for the future
of capitalism. But it did sort of open my eyes
to like, Okay, this is possible. You don't have to
have like corporate bonuses in excess of hundreds of millions
of dollars a year. Like people can like live really
well off of a fairly moderate income and actually free
(21:00):
up so much money for their employees to be happy
and make a good product.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Until the price of ketamine skyrockets, at which point David
rethinks this whole thing. Yeah right, Carrie Baton, you wrote
is Doctor Bronner's the Last Corporation with the soul for GQ,
and it's the story of the week. Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Thank you, Joel. I appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Oh my god, did you learn that from Doctor Bronner's.
That's so great.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
I know.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
I appreciate you too. I've read James Joyce's Ulysses, I've
read Emmanuel cons a prolegoma to any future metaphysics, But
I've never read something as hard to understand as the
label on Doctor Bronner's eighteen and one Hemp peppermint pure
castile soap. First, let me inform you that the label
(21:47):
clearly lists ten, not eighteen uses really ten. It name
checks Jesus, Hallel, Mohammed, Confucius, spaceships, and many many times
Thomas Paine. It also espouses a really unique form of
birth control which apparently works like this, and I quote
(22:11):
apply vasoline, oil, butter or cream, insert teaspoon, juicy lemon
pulp pH two. God's Law prevents conception one hundred percent
below pH three. Next day douche with court soapy water,
pH eight restoring pH five balance God made we officially
(22:34):
at the podcast recommend using a condom. Oh and one
other part that seems crucially important is covered by large
texts that says thirty two fluid ounces nine hundred and
forty six mili liters and yes, the whole time I've
been reading this, I've been completely naked.
Speaker 5 (22:55):
At the end of the show, what's next for joel Stein?
Maybe you'll take a naper poker round online.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Our show Today was produced by Joey fish Ground, Kate
McAuliffe and Nishavenkat. It was edited by Lydia g Our
engineer is a Manda ky Wang and our executive producer
is Catherine Shira Dau And our theme song was written
and performed by Jonathan Colton and a special thanks to
my voice coach Vicky Merrick and my consulting producer Laurence Alasnik.
(23:25):
To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm
Joel Stein and this is the story of the week.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Doesn't that peppermint soap seem like it's killing germs?
Speaker 1 (23:40):
It's killing more than germs. My wife's ob gyn told
me I had to stop using it because it could
cause you t eyes.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
That's good to know. I didn't know that.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
I don't know if that's true, but that's what she said.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Maybe your wife's ob gyn is in the pocket of
Big Dove.
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