# The Party Planner

An episode of [Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1396546917), 22 Sep 2026, 9:50.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/arttrk.com/p/D5CA5/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/e062c374-9a39-42fa-888f-ae2c007b3c85/7a4e972c-9689-4dbc-ae8e-b4cc01330ed8/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=f0f95fe5-d5de-4abe-ada4-ae2c007b3c8e

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## Transcript

[0:04] Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
[0:07] Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grim & Mild.
[0:12] Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history
[0:17] Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
[0:20] Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
[0:25] Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. You may have seen
[0:37] Speaker 2: the Wood meme online, where a Japanese lawmaker is tackled
[0:41] Speaker 2: by a massive group of his fellow legislators as he
[0:44] Speaker 2: tries to speak into a microphone. Clearly, Japanese politics can
[0:49] Speaker 2: be rough. But go farther south across the Pacific Ocean,
[0:52] Speaker 2: and you'll find that the Japanese have nothing on the
[0:55] Speaker 2: parliament brawls of Taiwan. It's practically a tradition there, going
[1:00] Speaker 2: all the way.
[1:00] Speaker 1: Back to 1988. It's part political theater... and part earnest
[1:06] Speaker 1: political violence. It's shocking, entertaining, and definitely curious. In May
[1:12] Speaker 1: of 2006, Democratic Progressive Party member Wang Shuhui was seething
[1:17] Speaker 1: at the thought of the opposing party passing their latest bill.
[1:21] Speaker 1: They were trying to lift restrictions on transportation across the
[1:24] Speaker 1: strait to the mainland, which would give the government less
[1:27] Speaker 1: ability to regulate their trade. It was a pro-China move
[1:31] Speaker 1: that she wouldn't abide by. Just as the vote was
[1:35] Speaker 1: about to be called on the legislation, she couldn't take
[1:37] Speaker 1: it anymore. She rushed forward, grabbing the copy of the
[1:41] Speaker 1: bill from her rival's hand. No one could have expected
[1:44] Speaker 1: what she was about to do with it, too. She
[1:47] Speaker 1: took the document, shoved it into her mouth, and started
[1:50] Speaker 1: to chew. The floor erupted into chaos. Huang was soon
[1:55] Speaker 1: surrounded by the opposition, who demanded that she spit the
[1:59] Speaker 1: bill back up as if she were a child or
[2:01] Speaker 1: a dog. but she kept her lips clamped shut with
[2:04] Speaker 1: little bits of paper sticking out of the corners of
[2:07] Speaker 1: her mouth. Soon, her fellow legislators reached up to her
[2:10] Speaker 1: mouth trying to pry open her jaws. Others had a
[2:14] Speaker 1: better idea. They started to pull on her hair as
[2:17] Speaker 1: hard as they could. Her face twisted with pain, and eventually,
[2:21] Speaker 1: they all gave up. But she was still cornered. She
[2:24] Speaker 1: had the bill and nowhere to go. Then she wasn't
[2:27] Speaker 1: about to swallow the whole document … So once the
[2:30] Speaker 1: others stopped attacking her, she quickly spit it out and
[2:33] Speaker 1: tore it up, which she probably should have done in
[2:36] Speaker 1: the first place. It would have at least saved her
[2:38] Speaker 1: all of that hair-pulling. Ultimately, she did delay the bill,
[2:42] Speaker 1: and shortly after this, Parliament adjourned for the summer. That
[2:45] Speaker 1: might sound awful, but what if I told you that
[2:47] Speaker 1: it wasn't even the most stomach-turning Taiwan Parliament brawl of
[2:51] Speaker 1: this century? No, that honor belongs to the infamous Pig
[2:54] Speaker 1: Guts Brawl of November 2020. This brawl wasn't instigated by
[2:59] Speaker 1: any one individual, but by an entire party. And this time,
[3:03] Speaker 1: our previous minority party, the Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP,
[3:08] Speaker 1: were the ones with the majority. They had implemented a
[3:11] Speaker 1: new policy lifting restrictions on U.S. pork and beef imports
[3:14] Speaker 1: into Taiwan. It seems an odd turn of events from
[3:18] Speaker 1: an outsider's perspective, seeing as the DPP previously seemed to
[3:21] Speaker 1: be against lifting restrictions. As the premier gave his speech...
[3:26] Speaker 1: the shrill sound of a whistle was suddenly heard across
[3:29] Speaker 1: the floor. Members of the Chinese Nationalist Party, or KMT,
[3:33] Speaker 1: started to wave banners that decried the lifting of the
[3:36] Speaker 1: ban as a danger to all of Taiwan. They believed
[3:40] Speaker 1: that the chemical ractopamine found in U.S. meat products would
[3:44] Speaker 1: negatively affect the health of their constituents. But they weren't
[3:47] Speaker 1: content to interrupt the speech with just whistles and banners. No,
[3:51] Speaker 1: they had something more significantly disgusting in mind. They revealed
[3:56] Speaker 1: large trash bags and buckets full of pork entrails, long, stringy,
[4:01] Speaker 1: fleshy bits of raw meat. They reached their hands into
[4:04] Speaker 1: the containers and came up with big fistfuls and aimed
[4:08] Speaker 1: them right at the opposition party. Soon, handfuls of meat
[4:12] Speaker 1: were sailing across the aisle and striking members of the DPP. Obviously,
[4:17] Speaker 1: they didn't take this too well, and soon the DPP
[4:20] Speaker 1: and the KMT members were in full brawl mode. Fists
[4:24] Speaker 1: flew and made contact, and the violence soon spread across
[4:27] Speaker 1: the floor. These supposedly dignified national leaders were now a
[4:32] Speaker 1: tangle of bodies rolling around on the floor covered with
[4:36] Speaker 1: raw meat, ripped up protest signs, and pages of legislation
[4:40] Speaker 1: that clearly wasn't going to be voted on that day.
[4:43] Speaker 1: And I get it. It might seem silly or even
[4:46] Speaker 1: disrespectful to us, and there are those in Taiwan who
[4:49] Speaker 1: feel the same. But to some of those legislators... They
[4:52] Speaker 1: feel those protests and brawls are the only way they
[4:55] Speaker 1: can show their constituents that they're standing up for them,
[4:59] Speaker 1: even when they're the minority party and have no real power.
[5:03] Speaker 1: It's a curious world out there, isn't it? Sometimes when
[5:06] Speaker 1: words fail, it seems that all that's left is to
[5:09] Speaker 1: let your fist do the talking. Thankfully, most politicians try
[5:13] Speaker 1: to defeat the opposing argument with their mouths, a lesson
[5:17] Speaker 1: that Wang Shuhui took literally. There is an item that
[5:34] Speaker 1: is so commonplace in American households that you've probably never
[5:37] Speaker 1: paid it any mind. It's a staple of daily life,
[5:41] Speaker 1: so necessary and simple that it's hard to imagine a
[5:44] Speaker 1: time without it. But this product would never have caught
[5:47] Speaker 1: on if not for a stroke of marketing genius by
[5:51] Speaker 1: a woman named Brownie Wise. In the 1940s, Brownie was
[5:55] Speaker 1: a hardworking single mother struggling to make ends meet. She
[5:59] Speaker 1: had recently divorced her abusive husband and and she and
[6:03] Speaker 1: her son were living with her mother in Florida. Brownie
[6:06] Speaker 1: was creative and ambitious, but she was also stuck in
[6:10] Speaker 1: one of the only jobs available to women in that era,
[6:13] Speaker 1: being a secretary. And needless to say, a secretary's salary
[6:17] Speaker 1: wasn't enough to sustain a family. So to make some
[6:21] Speaker 1: extra cash, she turned to the lucrative side business of
[6:24] Speaker 1: direct sales. Now, at the time, many household products were
[6:28] Speaker 1: sold by door-to-door salespeople. Think of them as spam emails
[6:31] Speaker 1: that knocked and wanted to talk face-to-face. And these people
[6:35] Speaker 1: had to convince their potential customers, who were typically housewives,
[6:39] Speaker 1: that their product was worth buying. Brownie was persuasive, and
[6:43] Speaker 1: she had no problem pawning off cleaning solutions and brushes
[6:47] Speaker 1: from Stanley Home Products. But there was one product in
[6:51] Speaker 1: her catalog that that was a particularly tough sell. It
[6:54] Speaker 1: was made of plastic, an unfamiliar material at the time,
[6:58] Speaker 1: and most people didn't understand how to open and close
[7:00] Speaker 1: the innovative plastic seal without seeing a demonstration. This product
[7:05] Speaker 1: had been in department stores for years, but no one
[7:08] Speaker 1: had been buying it. Even the company's top managers couldn't
[7:12] Speaker 1: figure out how to move the stuff. But Brownie could.
[7:15] Speaker 1: As a woman and a mother herself, she knew exactly
[7:18] Speaker 1: how to build trust with her target demographic of housewives—
[7:21] Speaker 1: by throwing a party. And so Brownie invited all her
[7:25] Speaker 1: friends and her neighbors over to her house, plied them
[7:28] Speaker 1: with refreshments, and showed off beautiful piles of the new
[7:31] Speaker 1: product in its various pastel shades. She used fun party
[7:35] Speaker 1: games to demonstrate how to use it, and even chucked
[7:38] Speaker 1: the plastic across the room to prove that it wouldn't break.
[7:42] Speaker 1: And once these women had seen from a trusted friend
[7:45] Speaker 1: how useful and convenient the product was, they were eager
[7:48] Speaker 1: to buy some for themselves. And from there, Brownie recruited
[7:52] Speaker 1: some of her customers to throw their own parties and
[7:55] Speaker 1: sell stockpiles of the product to their friends. They quickly
[7:59] Speaker 1: got on board because this wasn't just about selling household goods.
[8:02] Speaker 1: It was also about empowerment. Sales parties, you see, were
[8:07] Speaker 1: a way for housewives who'd been discouraged from working outside
[8:10] Speaker 1: the home to build something for themselves and connect with
[8:13] Speaker 1: other women in the process. The kitchen, the very place
[8:17] Speaker 1: that gender roles had constrained them to, became a source
[8:20] Speaker 1: of financial and social independence. Brownie's network of saleswomen grew
[8:26] Speaker 1: and grew until it gained the notice of the company's
[8:29] Speaker 1: top executives. In 1951, Brownie was hired as a vice
[8:34] Speaker 1: president of marketing, becoming one of the only female executives
[8:37] Speaker 1: of the era. She even became the first woman to
[8:40] Speaker 1: appear on the cover of Businessweek. Her party plan was
[8:45] Speaker 1: so successful, the company eventually took their plastic bowls out
[8:48] Speaker 1: of stores entirely, and sold them exclusively through these home
[8:52] Speaker 1: events that had become an emblem of the suburban life,
[8:56] Speaker 1: a gathering that became known as the Tupperware Party. I
[9:03] Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities.
[9:07] Speaker 1: This show was created by me, Aaron Manke, in partnership
[9:10] Speaker 1: with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the Grim &
[9:13] Speaker 1: Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about
[9:17] Speaker 1: the show and the people who make it over at
[9:19] Speaker 1: grimandmild.com slash curiosities. You'll also find a link to the
[9:24] Speaker 1: official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online,
[9:29] Speaker 1: as well as ebook and audiobook. And if you're looking
[9:31] Speaker 1: for an ad-free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's all
[9:35] Speaker 1: the same stories, but without the interruption for a small
[9:38] Speaker 1: monthly fee. Learn more and sign up over at patreon.com
[9:42] Speaker 1: slash grimandmild. And until next time... Stay curious.

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