November 2, 2024 • 52 mins
Anyone who ever picked up a comic book as a kid probably marveled at the ads for the mysterious Sea Monkeys. In reality, they are just brine shrimp, not fantastical beings with magical powers. But the story behind the invention of the Sea Monkey is tale all its own. Listen in to this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's Josh and for this week's select, I've
chosen our episode on sea monkeys that came out in
March of twenty eighteen. Sea monkeys are one of those
things that you just take for granted when you're a kid.
There's that one ad that was in every single issue
of every single comic book, and for those of us
lucky enough to mail off to get them, they became
an even bigger part of your childhood when you got
(00:23):
to watch them swim around in their cool little plastic tank.
But sea monkeys have an even more amazing backstory than this,
not just of toy fame, but also of intrigue too.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there. We are
swimmingly excited about this one because it is about sea monkeys.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Jerry is mama sea monkey.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yes, she's got her little blonde bob hairdo going on.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
And I guess we're baby sea monkeys.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
I guess, yeah, that's cool. We'll let's we'll let the
dad not exist. Okay, we're brothers, that's right. I think
that's a good.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Move with a non existent father, which really explains a
lot about us.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Non existent sea monkey father no less. Yeah, So, Chuck,
I realized that I don't know something about you, which
is weird because we've been doing this for almost ten years.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
And we're Sea Monkey brothers.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
We are. We know a lot about one another. We
know one another.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Smells, looks, scowls, all sorts of stuff, right, triumphs, victories.
One thing I don't know about you is whether you
were into comic books as a kid.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Well, glad you asked. I feel like we've talked about
this at some point, but maybe not. I yeah, we
have for sure, Okay, because remember I read Archie and
Richie Rich.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Oh yes, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
And I wasn't Well, here's a couple of things. I
read Archie and Richie Rich growing up and didn't get
into the superhero comics much because I don't know why.
But then, also, you don't know this part. We used
to go to visit my grandmother on my father's side.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
She was big time into Thor.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Granny Thor. She lived in Jackson, Tennessee, and it was.
I had sort of the modern grandparents with cable TV
who lived in a condo, and then old school granny
who lived in a house in the country. And so
granted Granny Bryant didn't have TV or anything like that,
(02:51):
but what she did have in the back room was
a bunch of my dad and Uncle Ed's old toys
and comic books from when they were kids. It's nice,
so I think they're mainly Uncle Eddie. So I got
I had a big stack of comics from I guess
the nineteen sixties that were like Man from Uncle. I'm
(03:13):
trying to read. I'm trying to think of a few more.
No superhero stuff, but just those weird sort of I
guess it wasn't weird, but Man from Uncle is the
only one I can remember.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
But it's a little weird.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Long story short is because that's all the entertainment we
had to ingest. We would my brother and I would
go back there and read those every year for years.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
That's pretty awesome, the same comics.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
So you made your way through that stack multiple.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Times, oh many many times?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Gotcha?
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Like I remember the ads, I remember, I remember everything
about them.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
So then you remember, obviously, I think you probably knew
where I was going with this from the outset. You
remember the ads for the Sea Monkeys, then.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
I remember Sea Monkeys, I remember for X ray specs, sure,
which we'll get into. And I remember for sure all
the ads for like can you draw this parrot? Or pirate? Oh?
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah? Remember that for the art school?
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Yeah? What was that?
Speaker 1 (04:12):
I think they just took your money and then sent
you a degree.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
For your art school.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Is that what it was?
Speaker 2 (04:17):
I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
So disappointing.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, but the turtle was pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
He had like a Newsy camp on and a turtleneck
and he just looked like he was ready to get mellow,
you know.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah? Oh you know. The other one too was the
Charles Atlas workout thing. Do you remember that?
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah, where the ninety eight pound weekling gets sand kicked
in his face. Totally man, Yeah, that's really playing on
some fifteen year old's insecurities and.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Worked Oh yeah, for sure. Sure, And what about you?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
I remember Sea Monkeys.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
There's one that always stuck out to me was a
Bonker's ad from the eighties. This would have been way
past your man from Uncle era comic books. But I
think I've asked you before if you'd ever had Bonkers,
they are like these fruit. They were like just the
superior Starburst. And there was a comic book ad in
there with like this like kind of crotchety old lady
(05:08):
in it, and I don't even remember the gist of it.
I think maybe she was mad that the kid was
eating bonkers and enjoying it. I don't know, but I'll
never forget that comic for some reason, because the colors
in it were just just perfect and they struck my
brain just right. So I've always got that Bonker's comic
book ad in there too, and a lot of bubble
bubbleum comic book ads are stuck in there as well.
(05:31):
Nothing that means anything really, and certainly nothing pertinent to
this episode except for that Sea Monkey's ad.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, but you and I were also into Mad Magazine
big Time, which I believe was ad free, wasn't it.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
It was they had like those fake ads, oh yeah,
of course, which were pretty hilarious, sure, but now that
I don't think they had any like actual ads in them.
They were just strictly subscription based, that's right. So in
that Sea Monkey's ad, if you'll remember correctly, and I
think for many decades. It was very actually the same thing.
It was this kind of group, this tribe of humanoid figures.
(06:09):
It was a family, but exactly what kind of family
they were is really up for debate. So there they
were kind of lanky, like stringy, ropey arms and legs,
paunchy tummies, naked is the day they were born, sure,
webbed feet, webbed tails, Like the end of their tail
was like webbed, which if you look closely, I think
(06:31):
was probably just a device to cover dad's junk in
the in the illustration, they were like, we need something
on the end of their tail there, buddy, And it's
just like this classic illustration of the sea monkeys that
apparently was done by this guy named Joe Orlando.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Mad Magazine.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Yeah, he's from Mad magazine. Creepy Magazine is another one. Uh,
he ran some comic lines at DC Comics for allays
kind of a legend, but he's also extremely well known
outside of the comic world for having drawn that sea
monkey family.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Yeah, I mean, I'll get at it right now. Look
at that. It's like unchanged.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
I know.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
And what's great too, is if we'll talk about later,
somebody some people went in and fiddled around with it.
And if you look now, if you go to buy
the sea monkeys now, they're basically back to the way
they were before.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Well yeah, and we'll get to that too. You also
didn't mention the castle, which is kind of key because
somehow they have these little crown like heads and I
guess we're kings of the bowl.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
I guess they were. Yeah, they were a royal sea
monkey family.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Kings of the fishbowl, and only inhabitants actually.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So if you right, so you could proclaim yourself the
royal family, you mean, And I have done that at
our house. So if you look closely at some of
those ads, they say, there's like a little fine print
that says these are caricatures of sea monkeys. It's not
actually what your sea monkeys look like, or it's an
artist interpretation or something like that. And it turns out
(08:05):
that sea monkeys and just prepare for your childhood to
blow away like so much dust in the wind, chuck,
sea monkeys don't actually exist. There's no such thing. Yeah,
did you know that already?
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Well, of course, well, sea monkeys, uh as, sea monkeys
don't exist, but they are real, little living creatures that
you buy, right, have shipped in an envelope back in
those days, in an envelope to your home.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
And they are actually their own things.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
So what they are ultimately is something called artemia or
Brian shrimp. Yes, but the guy who ended up calling
them sea monkeys was actually well within his right to
call them something different than just Brian shrimp, because they're
a hybrid version of Brian shrimp. The guy who invented
sea monkeys actually anchored along with a micro crustaceans expert
(09:02):
named Di Augustino.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
I can't remember his first name.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
I think when you have a name like Degastino, you
can just go buy that.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
So Degastino and this guy named Harold von Broughton or
braun Hot, right, they got together and they actually took
Brian shrimp and made them into something different, a hybrid
version that we now know and love as sea monkeys.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Yeah, so the literal sea monkeys that you buy don't
exist in nature, right, They are a man made creation.
I don't think we can get that through clearly enough,
because it's pretty scientifically, it's pretty amazing. And they did
that because they couldn't find any of these Brian shrimp
(09:50):
varieties that would live through the shipping process and be
able to be essentially rehydrated and brought to life to
the delight of children. So they made them right and there's.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
No clapping and squealing with original Brian shrimp right now.
So through these cross breeding programs they made Brian shrimp.
Brian shrimp were already you could. I think you can
still go to pet stores and buy them. They're a
type of food. They're a pet food, yeah, and all
they're just like tiny little micro crustaceans and they enter
(10:25):
into what's called cryptobiosis and they're basically if you'll remember
our tartar Grade episode, they basically do the same thing
that tartagrades do. They enter into the state of suspended animation,
a desiccated state where they're just dried out and just
sitting there waiting for the conditions to be right to
basically come back to life. That's what sea monkeys are.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Yeah, So you get this little package they're basically their
Brian shrimp eggs is what it is, or what they are,
and then you get purified water put them in there,
and I believe there's a growth formula as well. Right.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah, that's like their food. It's like spirrillina and yeast, I.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Believe, right, but it's no one truly knows what the
exact formulation for all this stuff is because it is
locked in a vault in Manhattan because it was it
was the only one that worked, and it was owned
owned by this Van Broughton character, Van Broughton bron Hutt.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Bron Hutt. I don't know. It's a tough word, tough
name to say.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
I've seen it a hundred times in the last like
eight hours.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
But still yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
So until he died in two thousand and three, Harold
von Bronhutt and his wife Yolanda were the only two
people on the planet who knew what the special formula
was that created those conditions. Because remember, you've got sea
monkeys little Brian shrimp that are in the state of
crypto bios. This is this dried out, descated state, and
(11:49):
when you put them just into regular tap water, they
don't necessarily come to life. There's something in that powder
that alters the pH and the salinity and makes it
just perfect for them to emerge from this cryptobiosis almost instantaneously.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
In fact, early on, the sea monkeys were originally just
called Instant Life, I believe, is what the name they
were originally marketed under. Yeah, not the best name.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
No, and it is it's weird that that name was
chosen because it turns out that Harold von Braunhutt is
or was a marketing genius. He wrote the original thirty
two page booklet that I believe still comes with the sets.
Is that right?
Speaker 1 (12:37):
I couldn't find evidence of that, and I was looking
online to find a transcription of it and was very
surprised to find no one's done that. Like you would
think there'd be entire fan sites that are that this
is like their bible, you know, the original version of
it would have later editions of it.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Couldn't find it anywhere.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Well, I don't know if it still comes with it,
but for many many many years and even after his death,
that original pros which told this fantastical story. I mean,
that's the whole point. It wasn't just like add water
and you're on set, right, I told the whole story
of sea monkeys.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
It said things like your sea monkeys can be hypnotized,
you can train them to play baseball, you can race them.
They're they're like they love to race all sorts of things.
You can basically train them into a pack of friendly seals,
I think is the way.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
They put it.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
It talked about like their courtship and reproduction and just
all sorts of stuff like it was, Yeah, this guy's
just basically do you remember that that treatment that George
Lucas wrote about Wookies and Chewbacca's planet that got turned
into the Star Wars Christmas special? Yeah, this is the
exact same thing. But this is the Sea Monkeys world, right.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
I would like to see what I was about to say,
I'd like to see the Sea Monkeys TV show, but
I did.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
What did you think?
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Did you watch any of it?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah? I did.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Yeah. So that was a TV show in the eighties
starring Howie Mentel. Yeah, it just really doesn't get any better. Like,
who else would have been better than Howie Mandel for that?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
It was Howie Mendel. He produced it as well, along
with the Chioto brothers, who were known for making killer
clowns from outer space.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Yeah, so you know what you're kind of going to
get there.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
It is the definition of camp Like they watched Pee
Wee's Playhouse and they're like, this is kind of campy.
But let's increase it by thirty five percent. Yeah, and
that's what they did.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
It was not long for this world though, what right?
Speaker 2 (14:31):
No?
Speaker 1 (14:32):
And the thing is is, I don't know if we've
gotten this across. It was live action.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Oh yeah, it wasn't a cartoon.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
That's what made it so not just campy. That made
it unsettling as well, Like the actors were all done
up as like sea monkeys, and it was four kids,
but it was obviously made by adults with a wink
and a nod to other adults.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
It was a weird, weird, weird show.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Yeah it was.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
I didn't see it, and I only watched like a
bit of one episode enough to judge the whole eleven
I think episode lifespan. But it was like Sid and
Marty Kroft without the LSD.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Right, it was with PCP instinct. That's how it struck me.
I was like, these people are on angel dust.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
Yeah. But all this to say that it was and
continues to be a big selling item. Like kids loved
sea monkeys. They bought them, and I mean, from what
I can tell, when kids bought sea monkeys, they didn't
care that they didn't look like those things, and they
were just thought it was cool that something they got
in the mail really did come to life.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Yeah, for sure, and you could raise them and after,
you know, after some tinkering, Von Brounhutt managed to get
them to live for a while.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
So these were like pets to the kids.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Plus I also think Chuck I suspect and this is
a big reason why sea monkeys were such a success.
Von Brounhutt when he started to market these things early on,
he was following immediately in the wake of something called
instant fish that I think Whammo had tried to market
and had failed terribly at And he was going around
trying to market something similar, and toy stores and retailers
(16:13):
were like, we don't want anything to do with those.
People almost lost their jobs over that instant fish stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Get out of here.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
So von Braunhaut, in a stroke of genius, said, you
know what, I'm going to go right to the source.
So he started marketing directly two kids.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
He started hanging out at elementary school parking lot.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
He did, and he'd be like, here, here, kid, come
look at my minivan.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
I've got a bunch of stuff for you to choose from.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Right, Yeah, Well, the comic book thing was a stroke
of genius. How many like three three and a half
million ads a year? Was that it? Or pages?
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Three hundred and three million pages? Oh wow a year?
Speaker 1 (16:49):
And now though, so most of those were two page inserts.
So that's one hundred and fifty issues of one hundred
and fifty million issues of comic books a year.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
I wonder how expensive that was.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
I'm quite sure he got some deals over the years,
because he started that marketing push in nineteen sixty four,
and I don't know exactly when it stopped, but it
was well into the nineties that there were sea monkey
ads and comic books still that were virtually the same
as ever.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Did you ever buy any of that stuff?
Speaker 1 (17:18):
I had a friend who had sea monkeys. I never
did myself. Oh, but that was a point that I
was getting away from that I wanted to make. I
think one of the reasons sea monkeys were successful was
because it wasn't just that these things were pets or whatever.
You ordered them yourself, like, you handled this transaction yourself right,
and you got to show your friends something that you purchased,
(17:39):
like your parents didn't take you to the store or
anything like that. You contracted with this strange man to
buy these Brian shrimp from him, and they arrived and
you followed the instructions and now they're floating around.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Yeah, well, you probably got mom or dad to cut
you a forty nine cent check or have them cut
a check, or you know, you you maybe got the
funds from your lemonade stand and converted that to a
cash bond.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Yeap, a bear bond.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
I don't know what any of that stuff is, but yeah,
so you probably had little assistance for mom and that,
or maybe you put a dollar in an envelope.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
I'll bet many kids did. I wonder if brown Hut
sent the the change the change back, or was like,
I'm keeping this change, kid, just to teach you a
lesson that to send a dollar bill in the mail.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Anymore, because he can't send change in the mail, right.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Right, So, I mean suffice to say, sea monkeys were
and are just like one of the classic toys of
all time, largely because of the way they were marketed.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Well, yeah, and von brown Hut this was not his
only jam. He had close to two hundred patents on everything.
Like you know, we mentioned the X ray specs and
that great, great ad of the guy looking at his
hand or the or the sec system misogynistic ad of
him leering at a woman in a dress, right, and
(19:04):
X ray spex were very disappointing him when you got those,
because they were it was two pieces of cardboard with
little pinholes that you look through, and in between the
cardboard where that pinhole is is a feather.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Right, And so what it did was it basically projected
two overlapping images of the same thing. So the edges
around the outside of it were just kind of fuzzier
than the middle.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Basically, Yeah, supposedly.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
That was what an X ray of your hand looked like.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
Yeah, so that that's a case of fraud, Yeah, a
good way to put it. Or what about the invisible Goldfish?
That was another one?
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Is that is that's so fraudulent that it's just beautiful,
it's elegant, and it's fraudulent.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Well, but it's almost not fraudulent because here was the deal.
He sold what was called invisible goldfish, which basically means nothing.
He sold nothing successfully.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
It was a the kit came with the fishbowl, fish
food and instructions and that was it.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
And there was a.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Guarantee that you would never see your invisible fish, well,
that they would remain invisible.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Yeah, and that's I think that is the distinction that
makes it not fraud. Right, is he basically said, you're
not going to see anything in this bowl.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Yeah, and that was that.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
What else did he do?
Speaker 2 (20:27):
He had He invented balder dash.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Oh, that's right.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
He also invented those doll's eyes where you lay your
doll back and its eyes closed. He invented those.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Yeah, he invented that technology, which is was a game
changer for creepy baby dolls.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
He also, even before his days of inventing, he was
an interesting guy basically his whole life. He he raced
motorcycles and cars under the name of the Green Hornet.
He was a talent manager for a couple of people.
One was a mental list.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Yeah, talent talent manager like Broadway Danny Rose was a
talent manager.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Okay, I don't know that is bumau go along with it?
What is that? Is that? What's that from the Name's familiar,
but I don't know.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
It was a Woody Allen movie where he played that
was it was a talent manager that managed like you
know people like this that would the high divers, that
would dive into shallow pools and mentalists. And this guy
was even a wouldn't he a mentalist for a.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Little while, I didn't see that. I wouldn't be at
all surprised.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
Yeah, I think he did a little work as the
Great something.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Did you see? Well he managed a guy named the
Great Danager. I didn't get whether that was him or not,
though it could have been.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
No, no, no, that was that was That was him
and he had his own act.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Oh god, okay, did you see the guy who who
the high dive guy? Did you see his jump?
Speaker 3 (21:50):
No?
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Oh my, okay, there's a guy named Amrie Lemouth. I
believe Yeah he Yeah, Imri Lamouth. If you go look,
I'm up, Hi, n Ri Lamoth, You're going to be
treated to an ap video that was shot in the
early seventies from the looks of it, where he's opening
up for an evil canievil act in a parking lot
(22:13):
and god knows where in New Jersey, and he climbs
up this ladder, a forty foot ladder, and below beneath
is one of these tiny little kiddie pools filled with
like eighteen inches of water, and this guy, who is
clearly in his mid seventies maybe older, dives forty feet
(22:34):
into eighteen inches of water in a kiddie pool belly first.
He does basically a belly flop and immediately stands up
with like teta.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
It's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen
in my life.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
And this guy, Harold von Braunhutt, managed that guy back
in the day.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Yeah, okay, he wasn't a He was a magician who
worked under the name the Great.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Tilepo that's a pretty good name.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
And he also admitted something the Directomat, which was this
device where you punch in your destination, like you're in
New York City, you punch in your destination and the
machine told you the fastest subway route.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Oh that's smart.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
It was Google Maps.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
That's very smart, like fifty years early, but using like
punch cards instead of you know, real technology basically.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
But I mean, the guy, you know, not only was
he a marketing genius, he had a real knack for
inventing some successful useful things.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
So he had this other thing that you could get
for like fifty nine to ninety five, and it was
actually a weapon, so much so that he was stopped
at LaGuardia Airport in nineteen seventy nine and arrested because
he had a briefcase of samples of this stuff that
he was selling I think through mail order, and it
was called the what is Coyoga Agent M five?
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Yeah, the Kyoga Agent in five. It's basically a telescoping
metal whip. You know, you've seen the telescoping batons and
things that cops can use. I guess a sure anybody
can use them. And do actually had one of those
for a little while for some reason?
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Did you really?
Speaker 3 (24:10):
I did? I thought, you know what, I'm not a
gun guy, but I thought, I'll put this thing in
the floorboard in my car. Sure, and if anyone ever
reaches their hand in the window, then they're gonna get
a wrapped knuckles smart that's funny. I don't know where
it went though. It didn't telescope properly, so I was like,
that's probably not good.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
No, it's not because you I mean, that's not what
you want and you plus, you have to practice with
that kind of thing, that's all.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
It's a big commitment. You just turning and running is
way better.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
Well, yeah, just I went back to plan A, which
is poo poop my pants and cry right, hopefully that works.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
No one wants to punch of guy who's just pooped
his pants, you know.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
All right, so none of the butt at least, right,
So this m five telescoping want or whip. This is
where things get weird. Yeah, and we'll we'll set this
up right before the ad break, because it turns out
that mister von bro Hud, mister von brown Hut was
(25:11):
perhaps almost certifiably a white nationalist aryan Nazi. Sure is
that fair to say?
Speaker 2 (25:20):
I think so? All right, and.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
We'll get to that right after this.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just
listen to JH. Sh Suffus no STUFFU No, okay, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
I'm sure everybody just bit the tips of their fingers
off waiting for those ads to finish so we could
get back to it.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Is it fair to call him a Nazi?
Speaker 2 (25:57):
So here's the thing. It has been.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
He's so thoroughly documented by legitimate sources like the Washington Post,
the Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Times, his own mouth.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
The Yes, his own mouth, the Jewish Anti Defamation League,
I believe. I don't know if the Southern Poverty Law
Center actually tracked him or not, but this guy has
definitely been identified as somebody who is has was a
longtime contributor to white nationalist groups, specifically the Aryan Nations
(26:30):
out of Idaho, which is one of the original white
hate groups in the United States. That's right, here's the
problem with that. This is the guy who invented sea monkeys.
The problem number two is that if you ever sent
your money off to buy some sea monkeys, some of
(26:50):
that money had a very good chance of having been
turned around and given to the Aryan nation. And here
in lies a real moral conundrum for a lot of people,
under standably.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
So yeah, so well I didn't see did he just
give money? Period?
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yes, but the people are saying I gave you some
of that money for sea monkeys. Who knows what dimes
and nickels that I gave you went to Aryan nation.
I don't want any money going to Aryan nation, so
I feel horrible that my money went to you, which
you turned in turn gave to.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
The Aryan nation.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Right. However, this M five was there was a man
named Richard Butler. This guy was a real piece of
human garbage.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
He was a founder of the Aryan Nation.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Yeah, he was the worst. He's not with us anymore, thankfully,
but he was a very bad man and he was
brought brought upon trial. And basically this M five little
telescoping whip that was invented by von Braunhutt, that was
specifically used that that product, and proceeds from that specifically
(28:01):
went to a fund to help out Richard Butler. Right,
so we know that for sure.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Yeah, everything's going along for Harold von braun Hutt pretty
swimmingly until the late eighties. Right in the late eighties,
Richard Butler is brought up, along with I think fourteen
or fifteen other white nationalist leaders on sedition charges basically
trying to overthrow the government through plotting assassinations, trying to
(28:29):
start a race war. They had some serious charges against them.
They were eventually acquitted of these charges, but as part
of this defense fund. In the Aryan Nation newsletter, Richard
Butler talks about the Cyoga agent M five as a
great you know, a great tool for every Aryan nationalist
(28:49):
to have a great weapon and defense mechanism.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
And if you.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Order this thing on the order form, write the letters
a n for Arian and the inventor of this project
product has pledged that twenty five of those sixty dollars
will be given to my defense fund. So now, all
of a sudden, for the first time ever, the guy
who invented sea monkeys is tied to the guy who
founded the Aryan Nation.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Hate group.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Yeah, and this was just like the beginning of the
can of worms, which he did not invent the can
of worms, but he should have. It was a beginning
of that being open because, like you said, late eighties,
what was an eighty eight I think? And the Washington
Post basically got a hold of this story, did some
investigating and found that he was involved in quote, some
(29:40):
of the most extreme racist and anti Semitic organizations in
the country. But here's the deal. There are quotes from
his mouth that say things about inscrutable, slanty Korean eyes
when dealing with Korean shop owners, and talking about Jews
and black people, like literal quotes. Yet when he's finally contacted,
(30:05):
this great article that we kind of started with was
when he was still alive, he would deny that this
was that this was him, right, and but not try
and clear it up or anything. Basically just say that's
a bunch of bunk. Where there were news letters written
for an organization called the National Anti Zionist Institute, written
(30:27):
by one Hendrick von Braun. But the return address was
the same PO box that you sent off to get
sea monkeys.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Yeah, sea monkey like paraphernalia still today, same address.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
So it's not very Yeah it's in Maryland, which is
where he lived. So he wasn't like covering his tracks
very well at all.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
So he so all that started that Washington Post expose
a specifically also came out of a property dispute. He
later claimed that all of these were lies and that
they were drummed up by somebody who's in a property
dispute with I think there was a developer who was
encroaching on his land and he was suing them, and
I think he said that the developer had brought all
(31:07):
this up.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
The thing is.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Whether the developer exposed it or not or tip the
Washington Post after this or not. This is already like
pretty well known in the toy industry and pretty well documented.
Like it wasn't just that this Harold von Braunhutt gave
money to the Aryan nation, like he would go to
(31:30):
their annual rally in Idaho and light the cross himself.
He would he would speak at some of their their
conferences and apparently not very well received.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
I thought, that's pretty funny speaker.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
No, he would.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
He would kind of go off on topics that the
Aryans weren't particularly interested in, like numerology or the pyramids,
or how it all tied together. But the thing is
he had a lot of money and he was apparently
quite willing to give it. Now, no one has we
have to say, no one has ever documented a penny
that was given to the Arian Nation. The closest thing
(32:10):
to a smoking gun is that newsletter from Richard Butler
saying that the inventor of this is pledged twenty five
dollars per But the very fact that he was basically
allowed into the orbit of Richard Butler himself strongly suggests
that he actually followed through on those campaign pledges and
legal defense von pledges. And apparently a former spokesman for
(32:32):
the Area Nation who is now a reformed racist, he says,
spoke out about Harold von Brown Hutt and said he
didn't know exactly how much he gave, but he gave
a lot, and he gave pretty frequently when he was asked.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Right. So things get a little weirder here because it
turns out that von Bronhutt was actually Jewish. He was
born to Jennette Cohen and Edward Bronhutt, not vonn Bhut.
Out of that little Vaughan to I guess germanize him,
I guess so. And he was born in New York
(33:08):
City on March thirty first, nineteen twenty six as Harold
Nathan brown Hut. And if you know anything about Aryan
Nations or any of those groups, they don't take kindly
to a Jewish guy, even if he's like rebukes that
to being a member. But like you said, he had
a lot of dough and that's basically why everyone thinks
they allowed him to stay on as a member.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
So that The nineteen eighty eight Washington Post article did
a couple of things. One out of the inventor of
sea monkeys as an Aryan white supremacist, or I should
say just a white supremacist, he was an Aran. It
also outed him as a non Aryan, as a Jewish
person born Jewish to Jewish parents about as Jewish as
you can possibly get. Aside from being a practicing Jew. Right,
(33:55):
so he he was outed in this in this Washington
Post article like two times over, so everybody was mad
at him from either side.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Right.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
The thing is like, even after, I guess, the Area
Nation released a press release about this, saying that they
were disappointed to find out this guy that they were
friends with was actually Jewish, but he was not kicked
out of their circle. He stayed apparently as intracted as
he was before and still was was a part of
(34:29):
the organization's conferences and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Yeah, and he was. It wasn't just the Aryan Nations.
He In nineteen eighty five, The Washington Post says that
US Attorney Thomas Bauer there was a weapons case in
nineteen eighty five against a member of the clan Grand
Dragon Dale Reusch.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Yeah, it was in nineteen eighty I think that the
transaction happened.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Okay, but the weapons case was in nineteen eighty five, gotcha,
and Van Brounhutt basically loan the guy twelve thousand dollars
so he could buy more than eighty firearms. Yeah, like,
here go buy a bunch of guns.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Well, okay, yes, and this is a Grand Wizard of
the Klan I believe right, yes, So the reason I
pointed out that it happened in nineteen eighty the year
before the Washington Post had drummed up in that nineteen
eighty eight article. The year before he had paid like
thirteen hundred dollars for his parents' graves in a Jewish
cemetery to be kept up in perpetuity. So this is like,
(35:33):
this is this weird dual life. This guy is living
like born and raised Jewish, respecting his Jewish parents funeral
wishes and burial wishes, and then months later helping a
grand Wizard of the KKK buy eighty three firearms and
then taking possession of the firearms himself until.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
The loan was paid back.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
It is a little crazy. It's quite surprising actually too.
I mean that's like a one two punch.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
You know.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
Yeah, So he didn't. Actually, he would do licensing deals
over the years. That's how he ran his business. Probably
smartly to do that, if you ask me. But over
the years have been many many companies that held the
license for sea monkeys that he partnered with, and they
all kind of had different reactions. That was one called
Larmie Limited, one called Basic Fun, one called Educational Insights.
(36:26):
There may have been more today it resides with Big
Time Toys. But this article that we dug up from
when he was still alive, basically, this guy gets in
touch with a lot of these people, and some of
them said they believe the story that it was just
some story that this angry neighbor cooked up to slander
(36:46):
his name. Other ones have said, yeah, you know what,
everyone kind of knew about it, but we're not gonna
we're not gonna take that out on the Sea Monkeys, right,
And he was a nice guy to us, and what
he does in his private time is no one's business.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
The thing is is, like some of the people that
he was doing business with were Jewish, and we're taking
some of the things he was doing in his private
life personally themselves. Like the guy who was the president
of Basic Fund, that's one of the worst names for
a toy company based It's like, don't get too excited,
this is just Basic Fund.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
That they had a spinoff company called Minimal Enjoyment.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Right.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
He he got the license or his company got the
license for Sea Monkeys to handle distributing and marketing sea monkeys,
and he apparently asked von Braunhutt, like, is this true,
and von Brounhutt told him no, there's this developer in
a dispute with who's like trying to drum up bad press.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
They're all lies.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Well, within a year, The New York Times wrote an
article about that annual rally at the Area Nation Compound
in Idaho and said that Harold von Bronhut had been
speaker there. So the guy from Basic Fun was like,
that's it. I'm done with your contracts broken.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Yeah. I mean that did happen sometimes over the years
and other times, you know people, I guess money talks,
so they were willing to put up with it. Yeah, yep,
it's crazy. He you know, like when he was called personally,
he said, I don't have to defend myself to you
or anyone else. I'm hanging up right. So I guess
(38:27):
it was a time when, you know, pre Internet, pre
social media, where you could kind of get away with
stuff like this a little easier.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Yeah, I mean, like he was, Yeah, it was just
an open secret. And I think, like you said, I
think you hit the nail on the head man when
there's like this much money involved, and when you're talking
about a brand where it's just like an beloved American icon. Yeah,
like people just look the other way on the fact
that you're a white supremacist. You know, it's it's bizarre.
(38:59):
But apparently this is a story of how the world
works in that respect.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Yeah, it was interesting for this one article I think
from the early two thousands. From the all was that
oh no, no, no, that was from twenty eleven. The
other one was oh yeah, yeah, that was when he
had currently the licensee was Educational Insights, and they at
the time it was funny to go back and read
this that they were trying to update the image for
(39:26):
the sea monkeys. Yeah yeah, and they had like these drawers.
They hired some big advertising guy and marketing guy, and
he came in and was basically like, man like kids
these days, they don't want these little skinny, pot bellied King, Queen,
Prince and princess family. They want superheroes. So he buffed
them up and put capes on them and made a
(39:48):
new jingle and they never went with any of that stuff.
It kind of all went in the waste basket.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
I think.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Well, one new thing did come out of it, and
von Or Harold brown Hut had a patent on it
was one of his li patents. It was a watch
that you could inject a couple of live sea monkeys
into and they would live in there for twenty four
hours before I guess either they died or if you
could suck them back out and put them back in
(40:14):
their aquarium. But you could walk around with your two
favorite or luckiest sea monkeys for the day and tell
time as well. So that was there was at least
one thing that came out of that updating. But if
you go back and look, if you look at those
you're like, this is pretty lame. And you go back
and look today at the sea monkey packaging, it is
basically back to how it was like in that Joe
Orlando style. But if you do want to watch some
(40:38):
business people do some tap dancing, it's really interesting. Read
this article. It's called the Sea Monkeys and the White Supremacist.
It was in the La Times on October first, two thousand,
written by Tamar Brought, who did a pretty good job
of like just some good old fashioned like footwork or
legwork going to pound the pound the beat with the.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Footwork, sniff him off the case.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
All Right, Well, let's take another break and we're going
to come back and we're talking about We're going to
talk about where things stand today in the fight over
the rights and the fortune of the sea monkeys.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just
listen to JH sh suffuse stuff.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
You s No, all right, so we know what happened. Actually,
how did he die? I didn't even see that.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
I didn't see that either. He died in two thousand
and three, but I'm not sure why. All right, So
he died, Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
But he left behind his wife, Yolanda Signorelli von Braunhutt.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Did you look her up?
Speaker 3 (42:04):
Oh? Yeah, okay, yeah she was. She was an actress.
She was sort of a sort of like a pin up,
bombshell b movie actress.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
It's fairsh I had also seen her movies as described
as adult films as well.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Sure, she was in a movie. I got to see
this one.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
It's called Love After Death and it's a softcore zombie
flick from the sixties. Yeah, but yes, she was a
pretty interesting person in her own right as well.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Yeah, and she says for her as far as the
Aryan Nation stuff. She says, like, I never knew and
saw this side of him. So I don't know if
she's being on the level or if she's just kind
of quashing this and covering for him. It was kind
of not clear to.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Me I saw.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
I don't know if it was in that New York
Times article or in the nineteen eighty eight Washington Post article.
But his first wife was contacted and interviewed for it,
and she was like, what are you guys talking about?
Speaker 3 (43:09):
Really?
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (43:10):
So who knows. Maybe he did just keep the He
was clearly somebody who could compartmentalize the different parts of
his personality. So maybe he really did just leave the
wives out of it.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
Man, how could you not know something? Right? That's crazy?
Just going to Idaho on my yearly trip.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Yeah, that's weird. He always goes to Idaho in the
Aryan Nation assembles.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
All right. So, Yolanda Signora Levan bron Hut lived and
I think still lives in or at least as of
two years ago when this article came out, in the
Potomac River estate in southern Maryland. But she is she's
she's she's broke. Yeah, basically, she has no electricity, no
(43:58):
running water, and she is and been in illegal battle
with Big Time Toys and their chief executive Sam Harwell
for basically several years, trying to get money because Big
Time Toy says, this is our company now.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Yeah, Big Time Toys sounds like I'd be nervous about
going into business with them. I'm more of a basic
fun guy. Big Time Toys sounds like they're moving too
fast for me, you know what I mean? Yeah, so yeah, So,
Yolanda Brown Hutt has She's got kind of like a
great gardens thing going on right now against her will.
(44:39):
This is not something she's happy about at all. And
her position is, as far as The Times tells it
is that she engaged in a licensing deal, which is
how sea monkeys have been produced basically since the beginning,
with a company with that company, Big Time Toys, where
they would handle the packaging and the distribution, and her company,
(45:04):
her own little company, would handle making the actual sea
monkeys that were that were put into the packaging that
Big Time Toys sold. Right, So, Big Time Toys would
buy the sea monkeys that they would put into the
packages and then would turn around and sell to the public.
That was the arrangement initially.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
Right, So we have the secret formula that no one
else has seemed to be been able to crack.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
This is Yolanda talking.
Speaker 3 (45:33):
Yeah, should I have done my Jolana voice?
Speaker 2 (45:35):
Yeah, let's hear it.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
I don't know what.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
She sounds like, high pitched Italian stereotype.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
Let's hear it.
Speaker 3 (45:41):
No, no, no, she It would have been like three
different groups of people if yeah, yeah, I think you wi.
She basically said, we have the secret formula, the only
one that works that can keep these things alive. Everyone
else has tried and failed, and so we will sell
these to you and you can do everything else and
cut me a check. And there was also a side
deal that said you can buy this company, including the
(46:05):
secret formula, for five million bucks up front and then
another five million and installments, and so Big Time basically
called her up a few years ago, probably about five
years ago at this point, if my math is right,
and said, you know what, all these payments we've been
making to you for the licensing deal, we just kind
(46:26):
of consider that layaway and as far as we're concerned,
we own sea monkeys.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Now.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Yeah, we've reached that five million dollar point. So there ares.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
Which ostensibly should not have been that money. It should
have been separate payments, if I understand this correctly.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
But I mean, when somebody does that, what are you
going to do? You got to go see them, right,
And that's what they're doing, and they're bleeding this lady dry,
at least as far as this New York Times profile
is concerned. And I mean, if you get into a
fight like that and you don't have the money, you
can lose. So this could be a sad end to
(47:03):
the Sea Monkey saga. Because here's the other problem. You
might be saying to yourself, well, why doesn't she just
not sell them the sea monkeys anymore?
Speaker 2 (47:13):
Well she did.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
She stopped when they stopped making payments and said they
owned the Sea Monkey brand. And it turned out that
in this court case that big big, big Time Toys
have been buying knockoff sea monkeys from China, and then
that's what they were putting into the Sea Monkey thing.
So apparently if you're buying, if you buy currently a
(47:35):
Sea Monkey package, you're getting Big Time Toys packaging and
Chinese knockoff sea monkey packets.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
Which don't work. Apparently, I went and looked at Amazon reviews,
and almost all of them for all the products said
none of them hatched, or they hatched for like a day.
These things stink. When I was a kid, they worked.
So it's weird that it's sort of ironic that they
ended up creating a special breed essentially that worked, and
(48:09):
that ended up being there undoing. Because in court and
the affidavit, the leader, this Harwell guy, whose wife, by
the way, is ahead. She's a speaker of the House
of the Tennessee House of Representatives. Yeah, they're a power
family all the way around and not to be trifled with.
In his affidavit, he says he outsourced the sea monkeys
(48:30):
of China and says there are seven recognized species of
our Timia brine shrimp and this is not one of them.
So because they had created their own species, it ended
up being there undoing at court. It looks like because
it doesn't officially exist as a real species that these
(48:52):
guys are getting.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
Yeah, but I'm pretty sure he got a patent on
the species that they made.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
Well, no, that's what I'm saying that. But he's not
getting that species. Oh, I see, he's getting these Well
they're not knockoffs their mother Nature's own. Sure, sure, China,
but they're not the ones that.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
Are working, right, I got youa.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
So it's just a mess.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
But then still doesn't that like raise questions about how
you could use the Sea Monkey's name or.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
That's what I wondered.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
But I guess if they had the license to use
the Sea Monkey's name because they were in charge of
packaging and distribution, maybe then yeah, I guess they could say, well,
we're not going to use the official ones any longer,
We're going to use these natural ones.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
Man, what a mess.
Speaker 3 (49:33):
Well, and it's a mess too because you're like, oh,
do I root for the side of this guy who
was a white nationalist, but you know, his wife says
she didn't know anything about that, and she's going broke
and has been basically had this company stolen from her.
It seems like, yeah, it's just I don't know, I
don't know what to think.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Or do you root for the guys who are apparently
stealing the company fake waido of the white national.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
Y for big time toys?
Speaker 2 (50:01):
Yeah? You know what. I predict that, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
I predict that Sea Monkeys the brand will ultimately rise
about this that it will. It will survive this somehow
and still be around twenty thirty years from now.
Speaker 3 (50:14):
The sea monkeys will take over.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
Yeah, they will eventually overthrow the human race, like the
Arians plotted to overthrow the US government. What a story,
It's quite a story. That's a good one, man. Thanks
for digging this up. Sure, well, if you want to
know more about sea monkeys, just start digging around, pulling
at the loose threads. You're gonna find some interesting stuff.
(50:37):
And since I said interesting stuff, that means it's time
friends for a listener mail.
Speaker 3 (50:44):
I'm gonna call this pomp Pei Pompeiian lemons. Okay, is
that how you would say it?
Speaker 2 (50:50):
Pompey in Yeah? I thought that was beautiful.
Speaker 3 (50:53):
All right, long time listener, first time emailer. Guys recently
listened to the Pompei show. Very informative. Uh and I
to be a tour guide in Europe and led close
to fifteen tours on the Amalfi Coast, Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius.
I listened to Josh experience with the lemons. They do,
in fact grow to be the size of your head. However,
those gigantic lemons are actually called sedri and are more
(51:15):
for show than anything.
Speaker 2 (51:17):
They're called sedri the end of day in it.
Speaker 3 (51:20):
If you ever cut one and a half, the inside
is actually about the size of a normal lemon. The
rind can be a few inches thick, and boy are
they bitter. Definitely not something you keep around for lemonade.
Just something I wanted to share.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
Thanks for ruining everything for me.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
And also another thought the other day in the car,
have either of you just said no when one of
you asked for a commercial break. I thought it'd be
funny if one of you just said, nah.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
We've come close. We have, haven't we I don't know.
Did it not make it into an episode?
Speaker 2 (51:56):
It might not? Have we have and we just edited
that part out and kept going. I think.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
Well that is for Matt McDonald, who is a software
developer at Neocloud.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
Thanks a lot, Matt.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
I think I was kind of disappointed to read that
email originally, but whatever, I guess you got to just
live with reality, right.
Speaker 3 (52:16):
You've made an enemy today.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
If you want to get.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
In touch with us and ruin our reality like Matt did,
you can send all of us, including Jerry, an email
to Stuff Podcasts at Houstuffworks dot com and has always
joined us at our home on the web. Stuffishould Know
dot Com.
Speaker 3 (52:35):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, it's Josh and for this week's select, I've
chosen our episode on sea monkeys that came out in
March of twenty eighteen. Sea monkeys are one of those
things that you just take for granted when you're a kid.
There's that one ad that was in every single issue
of every single comic book, and for those of us
lucky enough to mail off to get them, they became
an even bigger part of your childhood when you got
(00:23):
to watch them swim around in their cool little plastic tank.
But sea monkeys have an even more amazing backstory than this,
not just of toy fame, but also of intrigue too.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there. We are
swimmingly excited about this one because it is about sea monkeys.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Jerry is mama sea monkey.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yes, she's got her little blonde bob hairdo going on.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
And I guess we're baby sea monkeys.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
I guess, yeah, that's cool. We'll let's we'll let the
dad not exist. Okay, we're brothers, that's right. I think
that's a good.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Move with a non existent father, which really explains a
lot about us.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Non existent sea monkey father no less. Yeah, So, Chuck,
I realized that I don't know something about you, which
is weird because we've been doing this for almost ten years.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
And we're Sea Monkey brothers.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
We are. We know a lot about one another. We
know one another.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Smells, looks, scowls, all sorts of stuff, right, triumphs, victories.
One thing I don't know about you is whether you
were into comic books as a kid.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Well, glad you asked. I feel like we've talked about
this at some point, but maybe not. I yeah, we
have for sure, Okay, because remember I read Archie and
Richie Rich.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Oh yes, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
And I wasn't Well, here's a couple of things. I
read Archie and Richie Rich growing up and didn't get
into the superhero comics much because I don't know why.
But then, also, you don't know this part. We used
to go to visit my grandmother on my father's side.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
She was big time into Thor.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Granny Thor. She lived in Jackson, Tennessee, and it was.
I had sort of the modern grandparents with cable TV
who lived in a condo, and then old school granny
who lived in a house in the country. And so
granted Granny Bryant didn't have TV or anything like that,
(02:51):
but what she did have in the back room was
a bunch of my dad and Uncle Ed's old toys
and comic books from when they were kids. It's nice,
so I think they're mainly Uncle Eddie. So I got
I had a big stack of comics from I guess
the nineteen sixties that were like Man from Uncle. I'm
(03:13):
trying to read. I'm trying to think of a few more.
No superhero stuff, but just those weird sort of I
guess it wasn't weird, but Man from Uncle is the
only one I can remember.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
But it's a little weird.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Long story short is because that's all the entertainment we
had to ingest. We would my brother and I would
go back there and read those every year for years.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
That's pretty awesome, the same comics.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
So you made your way through that stack multiple.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Times, oh many many times?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Gotcha?
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Like I remember the ads, I remember, I remember everything
about them.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
So then you remember, obviously, I think you probably knew
where I was going with this from the outset. You
remember the ads for the Sea Monkeys, then.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
I remember Sea Monkeys, I remember for X ray specs, sure,
which we'll get into. And I remember for sure all
the ads for like can you draw this parrot? Or pirate? Oh?
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah? Remember that for the art school?
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Yeah? What was that?
Speaker 1 (04:12):
I think they just took your money and then sent
you a degree.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
For your art school.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Is that what it was?
Speaker 2 (04:17):
I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
So disappointing.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, but the turtle was pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
He had like a Newsy camp on and a turtleneck
and he just looked like he was ready to get mellow,
you know.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah? Oh you know. The other one too was the
Charles Atlas workout thing. Do you remember that?
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah, where the ninety eight pound weekling gets sand kicked
in his face. Totally man, Yeah, that's really playing on
some fifteen year old's insecurities and.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Worked Oh yeah, for sure. Sure, And what about you?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
I remember Sea Monkeys.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
There's one that always stuck out to me was a
Bonker's ad from the eighties. This would have been way
past your man from Uncle era comic books. But I
think I've asked you before if you'd ever had Bonkers,
they are like these fruit. They were like just the
superior Starburst. And there was a comic book ad in
there with like this like kind of crotchety old lady
(05:08):
in it, and I don't even remember the gist of it.
I think maybe she was mad that the kid was
eating bonkers and enjoying it. I don't know, but I'll
never forget that comic for some reason, because the colors
in it were just just perfect and they struck my
brain just right. So I've always got that Bonker's comic
book ad in there too, and a lot of bubble
bubbleum comic book ads are stuck in there as well.
(05:31):
Nothing that means anything really, and certainly nothing pertinent to
this episode except for that Sea Monkey's ad.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, but you and I were also into Mad Magazine
big Time, which I believe was ad free, wasn't it.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
It was they had like those fake ads, oh yeah,
of course, which were pretty hilarious, sure, but now that
I don't think they had any like actual ads in them.
They were just strictly subscription based, that's right. So in
that Sea Monkey's ad, if you'll remember correctly, and I
think for many decades. It was very actually the same thing.
It was this kind of group, this tribe of humanoid figures.
(06:09):
It was a family, but exactly what kind of family
they were is really up for debate. So there they
were kind of lanky, like stringy, ropey arms and legs,
paunchy tummies, naked is the day they were born, sure,
webbed feet, webbed tails, Like the end of their tail
was like webbed, which if you look closely, I think
(06:31):
was probably just a device to cover dad's junk in
the in the illustration, they were like, we need something
on the end of their tail there, buddy, And it's
just like this classic illustration of the sea monkeys that
apparently was done by this guy named Joe Orlando.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Mad Magazine.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Yeah, he's from Mad magazine. Creepy Magazine is another one. Uh,
he ran some comic lines at DC Comics for allays
kind of a legend, but he's also extremely well known
outside of the comic world for having drawn that sea
monkey family.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Yeah, I mean, I'll get at it right now. Look
at that. It's like unchanged.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
I know.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
And what's great too, is if we'll talk about later,
somebody some people went in and fiddled around with it.
And if you look now, if you go to buy
the sea monkeys now, they're basically back to the way
they were before.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Well yeah, and we'll get to that too. You also
didn't mention the castle, which is kind of key because
somehow they have these little crown like heads and I
guess we're kings of the bowl.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
I guess they were. Yeah, they were a royal sea
monkey family.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Kings of the fishbowl, and only inhabitants actually.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So if you right, so you could proclaim yourself the
royal family, you mean, And I have done that at
our house. So if you look closely at some of
those ads, they say, there's like a little fine print
that says these are caricatures of sea monkeys. It's not
actually what your sea monkeys look like, or it's an
artist interpretation or something like that. And it turns out
(08:05):
that sea monkeys and just prepare for your childhood to
blow away like so much dust in the wind, chuck,
sea monkeys don't actually exist. There's no such thing. Yeah,
did you know that already?
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Well, of course, well, sea monkeys, uh as, sea monkeys
don't exist, but they are real, little living creatures that
you buy, right, have shipped in an envelope back in
those days, in an envelope to your home.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
And they are actually their own things.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
So what they are ultimately is something called artemia or
Brian shrimp. Yes, but the guy who ended up calling
them sea monkeys was actually well within his right to
call them something different than just Brian shrimp, because they're
a hybrid version of Brian shrimp. The guy who invented
sea monkeys actually anchored along with a micro crustaceans expert
(09:02):
named Di Augustino.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
I can't remember his first name.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
I think when you have a name like Degastino, you
can just go buy that.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
So Degastino and this guy named Harold von Broughton or
braun Hot, right, they got together and they actually took
Brian shrimp and made them into something different, a hybrid
version that we now know and love as sea monkeys.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Yeah, so the literal sea monkeys that you buy don't
exist in nature, right, They are a man made creation.
I don't think we can get that through clearly enough,
because it's pretty scientifically, it's pretty amazing. And they did
that because they couldn't find any of these Brian shrimp
(09:50):
varieties that would live through the shipping process and be
able to be essentially rehydrated and brought to life to
the delight of children. So they made them right and there's.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
No clapping and squealing with original Brian shrimp right now.
So through these cross breeding programs they made Brian shrimp.
Brian shrimp were already you could. I think you can
still go to pet stores and buy them. They're a
type of food. They're a pet food, yeah, and all
they're just like tiny little micro crustaceans and they enter
(10:25):
into what's called cryptobiosis and they're basically if you'll remember
our tartar Grade episode, they basically do the same thing
that tartagrades do. They enter into the state of suspended animation,
a desiccated state where they're just dried out and just
sitting there waiting for the conditions to be right to
basically come back to life. That's what sea monkeys are.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Yeah, So you get this little package they're basically their
Brian shrimp eggs is what it is, or what they are,
and then you get purified water put them in there,
and I believe there's a growth formula as well. Right.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah, that's like their food. It's like spirrillina and yeast, I.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Believe, right, but it's no one truly knows what the
exact formulation for all this stuff is because it is
locked in a vault in Manhattan because it was it
was the only one that worked, and it was owned
owned by this Van Broughton character, Van Broughton bron Hutt.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Bron Hutt. I don't know. It's a tough word, tough
name to say.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
I've seen it a hundred times in the last like
eight hours.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
But still yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
So until he died in two thousand and three, Harold
von Bronhutt and his wife Yolanda were the only two
people on the planet who knew what the special formula
was that created those conditions. Because remember, you've got sea
monkeys little Brian shrimp that are in the state of
crypto bios. This is this dried out, descated state, and
(11:49):
when you put them just into regular tap water, they
don't necessarily come to life. There's something in that powder
that alters the pH and the salinity and makes it
just perfect for them to emerge from this cryptobiosis almost instantaneously.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
In fact, early on, the sea monkeys were originally just
called Instant Life, I believe, is what the name they
were originally marketed under. Yeah, not the best name.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
No, and it is it's weird that that name was
chosen because it turns out that Harold von Braunhutt is
or was a marketing genius. He wrote the original thirty
two page booklet that I believe still comes with the sets.
Is that right?
Speaker 1 (12:37):
I couldn't find evidence of that, and I was looking
online to find a transcription of it and was very
surprised to find no one's done that. Like you would
think there'd be entire fan sites that are that this
is like their bible, you know, the original version of
it would have later editions of it.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Couldn't find it anywhere.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Well, I don't know if it still comes with it,
but for many many many years and even after his death,
that original pros which told this fantastical story. I mean,
that's the whole point. It wasn't just like add water
and you're on set, right, I told the whole story
of sea monkeys.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
It said things like your sea monkeys can be hypnotized,
you can train them to play baseball, you can race them.
They're they're like they love to race all sorts of things.
You can basically train them into a pack of friendly seals,
I think is the way.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
They put it.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
It talked about like their courtship and reproduction and just
all sorts of stuff like it was, Yeah, this guy's
just basically do you remember that that treatment that George
Lucas wrote about Wookies and Chewbacca's planet that got turned
into the Star Wars Christmas special? Yeah, this is the
exact same thing. But this is the Sea Monkeys world, right.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
I would like to see what I was about to say,
I'd like to see the Sea Monkeys TV show, but
I did.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
What did you think?
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Did you watch any of it?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah? I did.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Yeah. So that was a TV show in the eighties
starring Howie Mentel. Yeah, it just really doesn't get any better. Like,
who else would have been better than Howie Mandel for that?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
It was Howie Mendel. He produced it as well, along
with the Chioto brothers, who were known for making killer
clowns from outer space.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Yeah, so you know what you're kind of going to
get there.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
It is the definition of camp Like they watched Pee
Wee's Playhouse and they're like, this is kind of campy.
But let's increase it by thirty five percent. Yeah, and
that's what they did.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
It was not long for this world though, what right?
Speaker 2 (14:31):
No?
Speaker 1 (14:32):
And the thing is is, I don't know if we've
gotten this across. It was live action.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Oh yeah, it wasn't a cartoon.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
That's what made it so not just campy. That made
it unsettling as well, Like the actors were all done
up as like sea monkeys, and it was four kids,
but it was obviously made by adults with a wink
and a nod to other adults.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
It was a weird, weird, weird show.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Yeah it was.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
I didn't see it, and I only watched like a
bit of one episode enough to judge the whole eleven
I think episode lifespan. But it was like Sid and
Marty Kroft without the LSD.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Right, it was with PCP instinct. That's how it struck me.
I was like, these people are on angel dust.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
Yeah. But all this to say that it was and
continues to be a big selling item. Like kids loved
sea monkeys. They bought them, and I mean, from what
I can tell, when kids bought sea monkeys, they didn't
care that they didn't look like those things, and they
were just thought it was cool that something they got
in the mail really did come to life.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Yeah, for sure, and you could raise them and after,
you know, after some tinkering, Von Brounhutt managed to get
them to live for a while.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
So these were like pets to the kids.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Plus I also think Chuck I suspect and this is
a big reason why sea monkeys were such a success.
Von Brounhutt when he started to market these things early on,
he was following immediately in the wake of something called
instant fish that I think Whammo had tried to market
and had failed terribly at And he was going around
trying to market something similar, and toy stores and retailers
(16:13):
were like, we don't want anything to do with those.
People almost lost their jobs over that instant fish stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Get out of here.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
So von Braunhaut, in a stroke of genius, said, you
know what, I'm going to go right to the source.
So he started marketing directly two kids.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
He started hanging out at elementary school parking lot.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
He did, and he'd be like, here, here, kid, come
look at my minivan.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
I've got a bunch of stuff for you to choose from.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Right, Yeah, Well, the comic book thing was a stroke
of genius. How many like three three and a half
million ads a year? Was that it? Or pages?
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Three hundred and three million pages? Oh wow a year?
Speaker 1 (16:49):
And now though, so most of those were two page inserts.
So that's one hundred and fifty issues of one hundred
and fifty million issues of comic books a year.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
I wonder how expensive that was.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
I'm quite sure he got some deals over the years,
because he started that marketing push in nineteen sixty four,
and I don't know exactly when it stopped, but it
was well into the nineties that there were sea monkey
ads and comic books still that were virtually the same
as ever.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Did you ever buy any of that stuff?
Speaker 1 (17:18):
I had a friend who had sea monkeys. I never
did myself. Oh, but that was a point that I
was getting away from that I wanted to make. I
think one of the reasons sea monkeys were successful was
because it wasn't just that these things were pets or whatever.
You ordered them yourself, like, you handled this transaction yourself right,
and you got to show your friends something that you purchased,
(17:39):
like your parents didn't take you to the store or
anything like that. You contracted with this strange man to
buy these Brian shrimp from him, and they arrived and
you followed the instructions and now they're floating around.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Yeah, well, you probably got mom or dad to cut
you a forty nine cent check or have them cut
a check, or you know, you you maybe got the
funds from your lemonade stand and converted that to a
cash bond.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Yeap, a bear bond.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
I don't know what any of that stuff is, but yeah,
so you probably had little assistance for mom and that,
or maybe you put a dollar in an envelope.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
I'll bet many kids did. I wonder if brown Hut
sent the the change the change back, or was like,
I'm keeping this change, kid, just to teach you a
lesson that to send a dollar bill in the mail.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Anymore, because he can't send change in the mail, right.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Right, So, I mean suffice to say, sea monkeys were
and are just like one of the classic toys of
all time, largely because of the way they were marketed.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Well, yeah, and von brown Hut this was not his
only jam. He had close to two hundred patents on everything.
Like you know, we mentioned the X ray specs and
that great, great ad of the guy looking at his
hand or the or the sec system misogynistic ad of
him leering at a woman in a dress, right, and
(19:04):
X ray spex were very disappointing him when you got those,
because they were it was two pieces of cardboard with
little pinholes that you look through, and in between the
cardboard where that pinhole is is a feather.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Right, And so what it did was it basically projected
two overlapping images of the same thing. So the edges
around the outside of it were just kind of fuzzier
than the middle.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Basically, Yeah, supposedly.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
That was what an X ray of your hand looked like.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
Yeah, so that that's a case of fraud, Yeah, a
good way to put it. Or what about the invisible Goldfish?
That was another one?
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Is that is that's so fraudulent that it's just beautiful,
it's elegant, and it's fraudulent.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Well, but it's almost not fraudulent because here was the deal.
He sold what was called invisible goldfish, which basically means nothing.
He sold nothing successfully.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
It was a the kit came with the fishbowl, fish
food and instructions and that was it.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
And there was a.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Guarantee that you would never see your invisible fish, well,
that they would remain invisible.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Yeah, and that's I think that is the distinction that
makes it not fraud. Right, is he basically said, you're
not going to see anything in this bowl.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Yeah, and that was that.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
What else did he do?
Speaker 2 (20:27):
He had He invented balder dash.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Oh, that's right.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
He also invented those doll's eyes where you lay your
doll back and its eyes closed. He invented those.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Yeah, he invented that technology, which is was a game
changer for creepy baby dolls.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
He also, even before his days of inventing, he was
an interesting guy basically his whole life. He he raced
motorcycles and cars under the name of the Green Hornet.
He was a talent manager for a couple of people.
One was a mental list.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Yeah, talent talent manager like Broadway Danny Rose was a
talent manager.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Okay, I don't know that is bumau go along with it?
What is that? Is that? What's that from the Name's familiar,
but I don't know.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
It was a Woody Allen movie where he played that
was it was a talent manager that managed like you
know people like this that would the high divers, that
would dive into shallow pools and mentalists. And this guy
was even a wouldn't he a mentalist for a.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Little while, I didn't see that. I wouldn't be at
all surprised.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
Yeah, I think he did a little work as the
Great something.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Did you see? Well he managed a guy named the
Great Danager. I didn't get whether that was him or not,
though it could have been.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
No, no, no, that was that was That was him
and he had his own act.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Oh god, okay, did you see the guy who who
the high dive guy? Did you see his jump?
Speaker 3 (21:50):
No?
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Oh my, okay, there's a guy named Amrie Lemouth. I
believe Yeah he Yeah, Imri Lamouth. If you go look,
I'm up, Hi, n Ri Lamoth, You're going to be
treated to an ap video that was shot in the
early seventies from the looks of it, where he's opening
up for an evil canievil act in a parking lot
(22:13):
and god knows where in New Jersey, and he climbs
up this ladder, a forty foot ladder, and below beneath
is one of these tiny little kiddie pools filled with
like eighteen inches of water, and this guy, who is
clearly in his mid seventies maybe older, dives forty feet
(22:34):
into eighteen inches of water in a kiddie pool belly first.
He does basically a belly flop and immediately stands up
with like teta.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
It's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen
in my life.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
And this guy, Harold von Braunhutt, managed that guy back
in the day.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Yeah, okay, he wasn't a He was a magician who
worked under the name the Great.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Tilepo that's a pretty good name.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
And he also admitted something the Directomat, which was this
device where you punch in your destination, like you're in
New York City, you punch in your destination and the
machine told you the fastest subway route.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Oh that's smart.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
It was Google Maps.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
That's very smart, like fifty years early, but using like
punch cards instead of you know, real technology basically.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
But I mean, the guy, you know, not only was
he a marketing genius, he had a real knack for
inventing some successful useful things.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
So he had this other thing that you could get
for like fifty nine to ninety five, and it was
actually a weapon, so much so that he was stopped
at LaGuardia Airport in nineteen seventy nine and arrested because
he had a briefcase of samples of this stuff that
he was selling I think through mail order, and it
was called the what is Coyoga Agent M five?
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Yeah, the Kyoga Agent in five. It's basically a telescoping
metal whip. You know, you've seen the telescoping batons and
things that cops can use. I guess a sure anybody
can use them. And do actually had one of those
for a little while for some reason?
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Did you really?
Speaker 3 (24:10):
I did? I thought, you know what, I'm not a
gun guy, but I thought, I'll put this thing in
the floorboard in my car. Sure, and if anyone ever
reaches their hand in the window, then they're gonna get
a wrapped knuckles smart that's funny. I don't know where
it went though. It didn't telescope properly, so I was like,
that's probably not good.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
No, it's not because you I mean, that's not what
you want and you plus, you have to practice with
that kind of thing, that's all.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
It's a big commitment. You just turning and running is
way better.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
Well, yeah, just I went back to plan A, which
is poo poop my pants and cry right, hopefully that works.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
No one wants to punch of guy who's just pooped
his pants, you know.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
All right, so none of the butt at least, right,
So this m five telescoping want or whip. This is
where things get weird. Yeah, and we'll we'll set this
up right before the ad break, because it turns out
that mister von bro Hud, mister von brown Hut was
(25:11):
perhaps almost certifiably a white nationalist aryan Nazi. Sure is
that fair to say?
Speaker 2 (25:20):
I think so? All right, and.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
We'll get to that right after this.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just
listen to JH. Sh Suffus no STUFFU No, okay, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
I'm sure everybody just bit the tips of their fingers
off waiting for those ads to finish so we could
get back to it.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Is it fair to call him a Nazi?
Speaker 2 (25:57):
So here's the thing. It has been.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
He's so thoroughly documented by legitimate sources like the Washington Post,
the Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Times, his own mouth.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
The Yes, his own mouth, the Jewish Anti Defamation League,
I believe. I don't know if the Southern Poverty Law
Center actually tracked him or not, but this guy has
definitely been identified as somebody who is has was a
longtime contributor to white nationalist groups, specifically the Aryan Nations
(26:30):
out of Idaho, which is one of the original white
hate groups in the United States. That's right, here's the
problem with that. This is the guy who invented sea monkeys.
The problem number two is that if you ever sent
your money off to buy some sea monkeys, some of
(26:50):
that money had a very good chance of having been
turned around and given to the Aryan nation. And here
in lies a real moral conundrum for a lot of people,
under standably.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
So yeah, so well I didn't see did he just
give money? Period?
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yes, but the people are saying I gave you some
of that money for sea monkeys. Who knows what dimes
and nickels that I gave you went to Aryan nation.
I don't want any money going to Aryan nation, so
I feel horrible that my money went to you, which
you turned in turn gave to.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
The Aryan nation.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Right. However, this M five was there was a man
named Richard Butler. This guy was a real piece of
human garbage.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
He was a founder of the Aryan Nation.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Yeah, he was the worst. He's not with us anymore, thankfully,
but he was a very bad man and he was
brought brought upon trial. And basically this M five little
telescoping whip that was invented by von Braunhutt, that was
specifically used that that product, and proceeds from that specifically
(28:01):
went to a fund to help out Richard Butler. Right,
so we know that for sure.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Yeah, everything's going along for Harold von braun Hutt pretty
swimmingly until the late eighties. Right in the late eighties,
Richard Butler is brought up, along with I think fourteen
or fifteen other white nationalist leaders on sedition charges basically
trying to overthrow the government through plotting assassinations, trying to
(28:29):
start a race war. They had some serious charges against them.
They were eventually acquitted of these charges, but as part
of this defense fund. In the Aryan Nation newsletter, Richard
Butler talks about the Cyoga agent M five as a
great you know, a great tool for every Aryan nationalist
(28:49):
to have a great weapon and defense mechanism.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
And if you.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Order this thing on the order form, write the letters
a n for Arian and the inventor of this project
product has pledged that twenty five of those sixty dollars
will be given to my defense fund. So now, all
of a sudden, for the first time ever, the guy
who invented sea monkeys is tied to the guy who
founded the Aryan Nation.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Hate group.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Yeah, and this was just like the beginning of the
can of worms, which he did not invent the can
of worms, but he should have. It was a beginning
of that being open because, like you said, late eighties,
what was an eighty eight I think? And the Washington
Post basically got a hold of this story, did some
investigating and found that he was involved in quote, some
(29:40):
of the most extreme racist and anti Semitic organizations in
the country. But here's the deal. There are quotes from
his mouth that say things about inscrutable, slanty Korean eyes
when dealing with Korean shop owners, and talking about Jews
and black people, like literal quotes. Yet when he's finally contacted,
(30:05):
this great article that we kind of started with was
when he was still alive, he would deny that this
was that this was him, right, and but not try
and clear it up or anything. Basically just say that's
a bunch of bunk. Where there were news letters written
for an organization called the National Anti Zionist Institute, written
(30:27):
by one Hendrick von Braun. But the return address was
the same PO box that you sent off to get
sea monkeys.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Yeah, sea monkey like paraphernalia still today, same address.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
So it's not very Yeah it's in Maryland, which is
where he lived. So he wasn't like covering his tracks
very well at all.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
So he so all that started that Washington Post expose
a specifically also came out of a property dispute. He
later claimed that all of these were lies and that
they were drummed up by somebody who's in a property
dispute with I think there was a developer who was
encroaching on his land and he was suing them, and
I think he said that the developer had brought all
(31:07):
this up.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
The thing is.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Whether the developer exposed it or not or tip the
Washington Post after this or not. This is already like
pretty well known in the toy industry and pretty well documented.
Like it wasn't just that this Harold von Braunhutt gave
money to the Aryan nation, like he would go to
(31:30):
their annual rally in Idaho and light the cross himself.
He would he would speak at some of their their
conferences and apparently not very well received.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
I thought, that's pretty funny speaker.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
No, he would.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
He would kind of go off on topics that the
Aryans weren't particularly interested in, like numerology or the pyramids,
or how it all tied together. But the thing is
he had a lot of money and he was apparently
quite willing to give it. Now, no one has we
have to say, no one has ever documented a penny
that was given to the Arian Nation. The closest thing
(32:10):
to a smoking gun is that newsletter from Richard Butler
saying that the inventor of this is pledged twenty five
dollars per But the very fact that he was basically
allowed into the orbit of Richard Butler himself strongly suggests
that he actually followed through on those campaign pledges and
legal defense von pledges. And apparently a former spokesman for
(32:32):
the Area Nation who is now a reformed racist, he says,
spoke out about Harold von Brown Hutt and said he
didn't know exactly how much he gave, but he gave
a lot, and he gave pretty frequently when he was asked.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Right. So things get a little weirder here because it
turns out that von Bronhutt was actually Jewish. He was
born to Jennette Cohen and Edward Bronhutt, not vonn Bhut.
Out of that little Vaughan to I guess germanize him,
I guess so. And he was born in New York
(33:08):
City on March thirty first, nineteen twenty six as Harold
Nathan brown Hut. And if you know anything about Aryan
Nations or any of those groups, they don't take kindly
to a Jewish guy, even if he's like rebukes that
to being a member. But like you said, he had
a lot of dough and that's basically why everyone thinks
they allowed him to stay on as a member.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
So that The nineteen eighty eight Washington Post article did
a couple of things. One out of the inventor of
sea monkeys as an Aryan white supremacist, or I should
say just a white supremacist, he was an Aran. It
also outed him as a non Aryan, as a Jewish
person born Jewish to Jewish parents about as Jewish as
you can possibly get. Aside from being a practicing Jew. Right,
(33:55):
so he he was outed in this in this Washington
Post article like two times over, so everybody was mad
at him from either side.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Right.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
The thing is like, even after, I guess, the Area
Nation released a press release about this, saying that they
were disappointed to find out this guy that they were
friends with was actually Jewish, but he was not kicked
out of their circle. He stayed apparently as intracted as
he was before and still was was a part of
(34:29):
the organization's conferences and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Yeah, and he was. It wasn't just the Aryan Nations.
He In nineteen eighty five, The Washington Post says that
US Attorney Thomas Bauer there was a weapons case in
nineteen eighty five against a member of the clan Grand
Dragon Dale Reusch.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Yeah, it was in nineteen eighty I think that the
transaction happened.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Okay, but the weapons case was in nineteen eighty five, gotcha,
and Van Brounhutt basically loan the guy twelve thousand dollars
so he could buy more than eighty firearms. Yeah, like,
here go buy a bunch of guns.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Well, okay, yes, and this is a Grand Wizard of
the Klan I believe right, yes, So the reason I
pointed out that it happened in nineteen eighty the year
before the Washington Post had drummed up in that nineteen
eighty eight article. The year before he had paid like
thirteen hundred dollars for his parents' graves in a Jewish
cemetery to be kept up in perpetuity. So this is like,
(35:33):
this is this weird dual life. This guy is living
like born and raised Jewish, respecting his Jewish parents funeral
wishes and burial wishes, and then months later helping a
grand Wizard of the KKK buy eighty three firearms and
then taking possession of the firearms himself until.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
The loan was paid back.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
It is a little crazy. It's quite surprising actually too.
I mean that's like a one two punch.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
You know.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
Yeah, So he didn't. Actually, he would do licensing deals
over the years. That's how he ran his business. Probably
smartly to do that, if you ask me. But over
the years have been many many companies that held the
license for sea monkeys that he partnered with, and they
all kind of had different reactions. That was one called
Larmie Limited, one called Basic Fun, one called Educational Insights.
(36:26):
There may have been more today it resides with Big
Time Toys. But this article that we dug up from
when he was still alive, basically, this guy gets in
touch with a lot of these people, and some of
them said they believe the story that it was just
some story that this angry neighbor cooked up to slander
(36:46):
his name. Other ones have said, yeah, you know what,
everyone kind of knew about it, but we're not gonna
we're not gonna take that out on the Sea Monkeys, right,
And he was a nice guy to us, and what
he does in his private time is no one's business.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
The thing is is, like some of the people that
he was doing business with were Jewish, and we're taking
some of the things he was doing in his private
life personally themselves. Like the guy who was the president
of Basic Fund, that's one of the worst names for
a toy company based It's like, don't get too excited,
this is just Basic Fund.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
That they had a spinoff company called Minimal Enjoyment.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Right.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
He he got the license or his company got the
license for Sea Monkeys to handle distributing and marketing sea monkeys,
and he apparently asked von Braunhutt, like, is this true,
and von Brounhutt told him no, there's this developer in
a dispute with who's like trying to drum up bad press.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
They're all lies.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Well, within a year, The New York Times wrote an
article about that annual rally at the Area Nation Compound
in Idaho and said that Harold von Bronhut had been
speaker there. So the guy from Basic Fun was like,
that's it. I'm done with your contracts broken.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Yeah. I mean that did happen sometimes over the years
and other times, you know people, I guess money talks,
so they were willing to put up with it. Yeah, yep,
it's crazy. He you know, like when he was called personally,
he said, I don't have to defend myself to you
or anyone else. I'm hanging up right. So I guess
(38:27):
it was a time when, you know, pre Internet, pre
social media, where you could kind of get away with
stuff like this a little easier.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Yeah, I mean, like he was, Yeah, it was just
an open secret. And I think, like you said, I
think you hit the nail on the head man when
there's like this much money involved, and when you're talking
about a brand where it's just like an beloved American icon. Yeah,
like people just look the other way on the fact
that you're a white supremacist. You know, it's it's bizarre.
(38:59):
But apparently this is a story of how the world
works in that respect.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Yeah, it was interesting for this one article I think
from the early two thousands. From the all was that
oh no, no, no, that was from twenty eleven. The
other one was oh yeah, yeah, that was when he
had currently the licensee was Educational Insights, and they at
the time it was funny to go back and read
this that they were trying to update the image for
(39:26):
the sea monkeys. Yeah yeah, and they had like these drawers.
They hired some big advertising guy and marketing guy, and
he came in and was basically like, man like kids
these days, they don't want these little skinny, pot bellied King, Queen,
Prince and princess family. They want superheroes. So he buffed
them up and put capes on them and made a
(39:48):
new jingle and they never went with any of that stuff.
It kind of all went in the waste basket.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
I think.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Well, one new thing did come out of it, and
von Or Harold brown Hut had a patent on it
was one of his li patents. It was a watch
that you could inject a couple of live sea monkeys
into and they would live in there for twenty four
hours before I guess either they died or if you
could suck them back out and put them back in
(40:14):
their aquarium. But you could walk around with your two
favorite or luckiest sea monkeys for the day and tell
time as well. So that was there was at least
one thing that came out of that updating. But if
you go back and look, if you look at those
you're like, this is pretty lame. And you go back
and look today at the sea monkey packaging, it is
basically back to how it was like in that Joe
Orlando style. But if you do want to watch some
(40:38):
business people do some tap dancing, it's really interesting. Read
this article. It's called the Sea Monkeys and the White Supremacist.
It was in the La Times on October first, two thousand,
written by Tamar Brought, who did a pretty good job
of like just some good old fashioned like footwork or
legwork going to pound the pound the beat with the.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Footwork, sniff him off the case.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
All Right, Well, let's take another break and we're going
to come back and we're talking about We're going to
talk about where things stand today in the fight over
the rights and the fortune of the sea monkeys.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just
listen to JH sh suffuse stuff.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
You s No, all right, so we know what happened. Actually,
how did he die? I didn't even see that.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
I didn't see that either. He died in two thousand
and three, but I'm not sure why. All right, So
he died, Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
But he left behind his wife, Yolanda Signorelli von Braunhutt.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Did you look her up?
Speaker 3 (42:04):
Oh? Yeah, okay, yeah she was. She was an actress.
She was sort of a sort of like a pin up,
bombshell b movie actress.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
It's fairsh I had also seen her movies as described
as adult films as well.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Sure, she was in a movie. I got to see
this one.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
It's called Love After Death and it's a softcore zombie
flick from the sixties. Yeah, but yes, she was a
pretty interesting person in her own right as well.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Yeah, and she says for her as far as the
Aryan Nation stuff. She says, like, I never knew and
saw this side of him. So I don't know if
she's being on the level or if she's just kind
of quashing this and covering for him. It was kind
of not clear to.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Me I saw.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
I don't know if it was in that New York
Times article or in the nineteen eighty eight Washington Post article.
But his first wife was contacted and interviewed for it,
and she was like, what are you guys talking about?
Speaker 3 (43:09):
Really?
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (43:10):
So who knows. Maybe he did just keep the He
was clearly somebody who could compartmentalize the different parts of
his personality. So maybe he really did just leave the
wives out of it.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
Man, how could you not know something? Right? That's crazy?
Just going to Idaho on my yearly trip.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Yeah, that's weird. He always goes to Idaho in the
Aryan Nation assembles.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
All right. So, Yolanda Signora Levan bron Hut lived and
I think still lives in or at least as of
two years ago when this article came out, in the
Potomac River estate in southern Maryland. But she is she's
she's she's broke. Yeah, basically, she has no electricity, no
(43:58):
running water, and she is and been in illegal battle
with Big Time Toys and their chief executive Sam Harwell
for basically several years, trying to get money because Big
Time Toy says, this is our company now.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Yeah, Big Time Toys sounds like I'd be nervous about
going into business with them. I'm more of a basic
fun guy. Big Time Toys sounds like they're moving too
fast for me, you know what I mean? Yeah, so yeah, So,
Yolanda Brown Hutt has She's got kind of like a
great gardens thing going on right now against her will.
(44:39):
This is not something she's happy about at all. And
her position is, as far as The Times tells it
is that she engaged in a licensing deal, which is
how sea monkeys have been produced basically since the beginning,
with a company with that company, Big Time Toys, where
they would handle the packaging and the distribution, and her company,
(45:04):
her own little company, would handle making the actual sea
monkeys that were that were put into the packaging that
Big Time Toys sold. Right, So, Big Time Toys would
buy the sea monkeys that they would put into the
packages and then would turn around and sell to the public.
That was the arrangement initially.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
Right, So we have the secret formula that no one
else has seemed to be been able to crack.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
This is Yolanda talking.
Speaker 3 (45:33):
Yeah, should I have done my Jolana voice?
Speaker 2 (45:35):
Yeah, let's hear it.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
I don't know what.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
She sounds like, high pitched Italian stereotype.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
Let's hear it.
Speaker 3 (45:41):
No, no, no, she It would have been like three
different groups of people if yeah, yeah, I think you wi.
She basically said, we have the secret formula, the only
one that works that can keep these things alive. Everyone
else has tried and failed, and so we will sell
these to you and you can do everything else and
cut me a check. And there was also a side
deal that said you can buy this company, including the
(46:05):
secret formula, for five million bucks up front and then
another five million and installments, and so Big Time basically
called her up a few years ago, probably about five
years ago at this point, if my math is right,
and said, you know what, all these payments we've been
making to you for the licensing deal, we just kind
(46:26):
of consider that layaway and as far as we're concerned,
we own sea monkeys.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Now.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Yeah, we've reached that five million dollar point. So there ares.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
Which ostensibly should not have been that money. It should
have been separate payments, if I understand this correctly.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
But I mean, when somebody does that, what are you
going to do? You got to go see them, right,
And that's what they're doing, and they're bleeding this lady dry,
at least as far as this New York Times profile
is concerned. And I mean, if you get into a
fight like that and you don't have the money, you
can lose. So this could be a sad end to
(47:03):
the Sea Monkey saga. Because here's the other problem. You
might be saying to yourself, well, why doesn't she just
not sell them the sea monkeys anymore?
Speaker 2 (47:13):
Well she did.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
She stopped when they stopped making payments and said they
owned the Sea Monkey brand. And it turned out that
in this court case that big big, big Time Toys
have been buying knockoff sea monkeys from China, and then
that's what they were putting into the Sea Monkey thing.
So apparently if you're buying, if you buy currently a
(47:35):
Sea Monkey package, you're getting Big Time Toys packaging and
Chinese knockoff sea monkey packets.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
Which don't work. Apparently, I went and looked at Amazon reviews,
and almost all of them for all the products said
none of them hatched, or they hatched for like a day.
These things stink. When I was a kid, they worked.
So it's weird that it's sort of ironic that they
ended up creating a special breed essentially that worked, and
(48:09):
that ended up being there undoing. Because in court and
the affidavit, the leader, this Harwell guy, whose wife, by
the way, is ahead. She's a speaker of the House
of the Tennessee House of Representatives. Yeah, they're a power
family all the way around and not to be trifled with.
In his affidavit, he says he outsourced the sea monkeys
(48:30):
of China and says there are seven recognized species of
our Timia brine shrimp and this is not one of them.
So because they had created their own species, it ended
up being there undoing at court. It looks like because
it doesn't officially exist as a real species that these
(48:52):
guys are getting.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
Yeah, but I'm pretty sure he got a patent on
the species that they made.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
Well, no, that's what I'm saying that. But he's not
getting that species. Oh, I see, he's getting these Well
they're not knockoffs their mother Nature's own. Sure, sure, China,
but they're not the ones that.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
Are working, right, I got youa.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
So it's just a mess.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
But then still doesn't that like raise questions about how
you could use the Sea Monkey's name or.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
That's what I wondered.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
But I guess if they had the license to use
the Sea Monkey's name because they were in charge of
packaging and distribution, maybe then yeah, I guess they could say, well,
we're not going to use the official ones any longer,
We're going to use these natural ones.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
Man, what a mess.
Speaker 3 (49:33):
Well, and it's a mess too because you're like, oh,
do I root for the side of this guy who
was a white nationalist, but you know, his wife says
she didn't know anything about that, and she's going broke
and has been basically had this company stolen from her.
It seems like, yeah, it's just I don't know, I
don't know what to think.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Or do you root for the guys who are apparently
stealing the company fake waido of the white national.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
Y for big time toys?
Speaker 2 (50:01):
Yeah? You know what. I predict that, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
I predict that Sea Monkeys the brand will ultimately rise
about this that it will. It will survive this somehow
and still be around twenty thirty years from now.
Speaker 3 (50:14):
The sea monkeys will take over.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
Yeah, they will eventually overthrow the human race, like the
Arians plotted to overthrow the US government. What a story,
It's quite a story. That's a good one, man. Thanks
for digging this up. Sure, well, if you want to
know more about sea monkeys, just start digging around, pulling
at the loose threads. You're gonna find some interesting stuff.
(50:37):
And since I said interesting stuff, that means it's time
friends for a listener mail.
Speaker 3 (50:44):
I'm gonna call this pomp Pei Pompeiian lemons. Okay, is
that how you would say it?
Speaker 2 (50:50):
Pompey in Yeah? I thought that was beautiful.
Speaker 3 (50:53):
All right, long time listener, first time emailer. Guys recently
listened to the Pompei show. Very informative. Uh and I
to be a tour guide in Europe and led close
to fifteen tours on the Amalfi Coast, Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius.
I listened to Josh experience with the lemons. They do,
in fact grow to be the size of your head. However,
those gigantic lemons are actually called sedri and are more
(51:15):
for show than anything.
Speaker 2 (51:17):
They're called sedri the end of day in it.
Speaker 3 (51:20):
If you ever cut one and a half, the inside
is actually about the size of a normal lemon. The
rind can be a few inches thick, and boy are
they bitter. Definitely not something you keep around for lemonade.
Just something I wanted to share.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
Thanks for ruining everything for me.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
And also another thought the other day in the car,
have either of you just said no when one of
you asked for a commercial break. I thought it'd be
funny if one of you just said, nah.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
We've come close. We have, haven't we I don't know.
Did it not make it into an episode?
Speaker 2 (51:56):
It might not? Have we have and we just edited
that part out and kept going. I think.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
Well that is for Matt McDonald, who is a software
developer at Neocloud.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
Thanks a lot, Matt.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
I think I was kind of disappointed to read that
email originally, but whatever, I guess you got to just
live with reality, right.
Speaker 3 (52:16):
You've made an enemy today.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
If you want to get.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
In touch with us and ruin our reality like Matt did,
you can send all of us, including Jerry, an email
to Stuff Podcasts at Houstuffworks dot com and has always
joined us at our home on the web. Stuffishould Know
dot Com.
Speaker 3 (52:35):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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