Final Advice for Future Activists

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK If you are currently overpaying on software to run your business Remember this number ten thousand That's the number of new businesses that join OdDu per month Join Odoo today at Odoo. com at OdWo. com. The United States is about to mark its two hundred fiftieth anniversary. And so on the gllobal story podcast from the BBC, we're telling surprising tales of American influence on the world stage and in ordinary people's lives all across the globe. We have this ability to export our story, and a lot of people bought it. I feel like the American Dream is alive, but not well rom the BBC, it's the United States at two hundred fifty. Listen on bbc d. com or wherever you get your podcasts. Just before we get into this week's episode, with the remarkable Ben Cohen, one half of Ben and Jerry's, I want to tell you about who's coming up next week on this podcast and ask for your questions for Kate Rayworth, the economist, author of Donut Economics, loads and loads and loads of you have asked for her to come on as a guest We listen to you as much as you listen to us. So Kate Rayworth is coming on, seend us your questions about all manner of economic issues. The number is on WhatsApp? zero three threezo, one two three nine four eight z.zo three three zero, one two three nine four eight z email us on radical at bbc. co d. Uk. You said you wanted her to come on and she's coming on, so we want your questions Now, didn't they do well as Bruce Forsth used to say on the generation game. That was my childhood Saturday night, goodness me, the conveyor belllt. didnidn't they do well? The stand ins, but they weren't stand ins. They were just direct replacement substitutes who presented this podcast while I was in a certain Scottish castle filming. a show called Traitors or celebrity Traitors, which you'll see late this year. Imempted tell you what happened but I'm not I'm not good because I'm not allowed to. But I would like to say a huge thank you to Eliza Filby, Dr. Eliza Fhilby, to Ollie Dougmore and John Berne Murdockch because to an extent that I'm slightly disappointed and alarmed by, they were absolutely magnificent. And I listened to all three of those episodes and they were really, really good So while I hope you missed me, I hope you listened to those episodes as well. Thank you to Eliza, to Ollie, and to John Byne Murdoch. Now just before I introduce today's remarkable guest and it's a fantastic conversation. You're going be so into it. I just want to say something about the word radical. I think social psychologists call this the availability heuristic or confirmation bias Like when I'm told, when you become pregnant, if you're luck enough to get pregnant, suddenlywhere look, there's lots lots of pregnant people. Similarly, if you present a podcast called Radical Suddenly everywhere you look, the word radical pops up and I can't help but notice, I'd be interested to know if you think the same thing I just keep seeing people referring to the word radical in the context of politics and doing so in a positive way. So when Tony Blair published that five thousand word essay on the website of his Tony Blair Institute, he referred to occupying the radical center of British politics. He said the trouble in politics is the sensible people aren't radical and the radical people aren't sensible Then I read a column by Fraser Nelson in the Times about a subject which I feel very strongly about, which is the million or so Nats in this country, young people, not in education, employment or training Fraser Nelson said that Alan Milburn's policy review was in the radical transformative tradition of William Beveridge's great report of the nineteen forties Fraser Nelser went on to say both left and right seem impressed by his radicalism Then I turned to an interview that Jeremyunt, the former Chancellor gave to The Sunday Times and a journalist there, brilliant journalist called Josh Glancy. And Jeremy Hunt says, I've lost faith that this government, the Labour government, is willing to be radical in the way that the country needs. And I just want to say to all of these people occupying whether it's the radical center of British politics or the radical left, or the radical right. If those things still exist, if you're looking for radical ideas What can I say? It is a very good podcast withith a very handsome presenter, No stop that. There's a very good podcast full of radical ideas. It's called Radical and I hope you're tuning in Anyway, enough about that. Joining me today is a man almost guaranteed to have made his way into your life on a very regular and pretty radical basis. He's responsible for many delicious frozen desserts and he is a genuine radical. He is Ben Cohen, One half of the most famous partnership in ice cream, Ben and Jerry's. He was born in New York. In nineteen fifty one, he met a guy called Jerry Greenfield in a gym class at school when they were twelve or thirteen. And the two of them made their way north to Vermont in the nineteen seventies and they opened an ice cream emporium. And there is an amazing story about how these two young hippies, I think I can call them that in their mid twenties, wanted to set up a bagel factory. they ended up selling ice cream, and the rest is almost history as you're about to hear But over the following decades, their ice cream brand and company became a vehicle for radical caauses radical politics, true to the counterculture of their youth, Beningerry campaigned for socially progressive issues and against wars, even after shareholders in their companies sold up to the Consumer goodoods conglomerate Unileva in two thousand.. Things get a little bit messy. So over the years, their ability to speak out was somewhat stymied by corporate executives who are worried about the damage to sales. Jerry Greenfield quit the company last October after Unilever spun out their ice cream business to a separate company, the Magnum Iice cream Company, with the duo saying that Ben and Jerry's mission, their brand values and independence are now being repeatedly compromised something that the Magnum Iice cream Comany very strongly resist Coen One half of Ben and Jerry's remains a staff member, but not on the board of the company and he says he has no authority or responsibilities, but he is in campaigning mode. He campaigns on a huge number of issues in Donald Trump's America. He was very close to Bernie Sanders and worked with him, but he's also campaigning frankly for Ben and Jerrys, the company that he founded fifty odd years ago to be sold to socially aligned investors. So today we're going to explore This whole idea of ethical Capitalism of profits and people, of whether or not products like ice cream really can be a vehicle for radical values. And as you're going to hear, Ben Cohen does believe very strongly and he's given pretty much a lifetime to this idea that chocolate fudge brownie isn't just a flavour of ice cream, it's also a labour market intervention. It's also a principled stand We're going to explore whether or not companies can achieve social change as well as profitability, and we're going to talk about the limits of radicalism when it brushes up against commercial interests shareholders. But before we begin, a quick reminder if you subscribe to Radical on BC Sounds you won't miss future episodes, including yourour radical questions our listen to Q and A, which is released every Monday and Ben Cohen is going to be answering your questions there as well Right ono this week's episode with Ben Cohen, who by the way, sorry, I realize this is a slightly longer intro than usual, but I've been away. I've been in a Scott C castle so forgive me. By the way, he is our fiftieth guest since we began Radical. Thank you so much. notot just to him But to you for being part of the conversations that we've had here, you are the best listeners in the world. and by the way, you are growing in number in a very pleasing I think we need some ice cream to celebrate You happy guys? Thumbs up. We've got a thumbs up on the other side. Okay, that means it's time for me to say A kind of happy London. goodood morning to Ben Cohn. Ben, how are you? Amal? I'm good. I'm having a good time. I had a strange experience in Shordditch a couple of nights ago, but I've survived. People are going to think you're talking about hallucinogenic drugs. I think we need to explain that you came into this studio on a crutch because having landed in London and you're staying in Shoreditch and East London You had an unfortunate dallance with a curb. That's correct, whichich meant that your ankle went over and you've come in with a crutch. We could get into hallucinogenics, but that might come a little bit later in the conversation. I wasn't going to start there. I was actually going to start if I may by saying not only how grateful we are that you should join us. And you know this is a podcast about radical ideas. It's an attempt to grapple with the big forces that are changing the world And you've done that for many of your decades on earth. I knew that Ben and Jerry's was one of the world's most famous not just ice creream brands but activist companies. and I knew quite a lot about your history as a result of it before doing the research for this podcast I didn't realize how active you are right now in getting yourself into trouble. And there are two examples of your action recently, which I think useful just a starting point before we go back in time and talk a bit about how we got here One is that I think I'm right saying you were arrested outside the White House not so long ago because You had a chainsaw in your hand. And you weren't taking that chainsaw to individuals. What were you doing with a chainsaw that prompted you not so long ago to be arrested outside the White House? Well, just to be clear You weren't taking hallucinogenic drug and sh it and you weren't doing acts of violence outside the White House. L clear. I wasn't arrested for the chainsaw. I was arrested for interrupting a congressional hearing. The chainsaw deal was that, you know, Elon Musk had a chainsaw and he was taking a chainsaw to supposedly government waste, which turned out to be h allowed You could say that We could say yes, whatever you like. And this was Elon Musk's so called Doge, the Department of Goverment Efficiency, which is a project that he took with the start of the Trump second term But the issue was that He neglected to take the trains to biggest source of waste in the entire federal government, which is The Pentagon what Trump has now renamed the Department of warar under Pete Higset. Yeah W seecretary. Yeah. ye. Yeah because one of the things about you're horrible. one of the things about your worldview and your politics is that you sort of You've been very struck by the fact that the U. S. has been able to find more money for its war aims and its military activities at a time when it's not found that money for the Tens of millions of people living in poverty in America Exactly. And, you know, what what we hear about is that Oh my God, America's in debt. We don't have any money. the The national debt is trillions and trillions of dollars. We can't afford anything. We can't afford to take care of people And then All of a sudden Trump decides that, well, I can scrape up another five hundred billion dollars and the only thing he can think of to do with it is to dump it on the Department of war I mean, that is such a huge amount of money you know, none of us can conceive of these huge numbers, but I mean, it's enough to provide child care for everybody in the U. S. It's enough to build millions of units of affordable housing It's enough to fund our schools that are in bad shape You could you could do things that really affect people's lives And he's deciding to affect people's lives by preparing to kill millions of more people And at the same time, you got yourself in trouble because you were really outraged by somethingomething that Robert Kennedy Jr. was doing in Washington And I think it was in particular a case of lead poisoning, which even for someone who's known for taking a public stand on things There was something about lead poisoning in this particular case that sent you even more as it were over the edge of fury than you'd been in the past. Just tell us what happened there. Lead poisoning is for life. There's no cure for it. There's nothing you can do about it and it kind of affects your brain. It makes it so that your The brain doesn't function as well you know, some expert said that If you wanted to put something into a population to keep them down for generations and generations, it would be lead. You know, everybody's got their breaking point. So that was my breaking point. and I was looking to chain myself to the White House U in protest about that And you know, my people are telling me, Well, you can't really do that anymore. The White House fence has been militarized. You can't actually get to the White House fence. They put up a separate fence and in between the two fences are these guys with these duty machine guns So they said we think what we can do is we can get you into a congressional hearing and You know, you can interrupt the hearing So they they did that. I didn't really know which hearing it was going to be and it ended up being with Bobby Kennedy. and so it was about health and human services or something. Our government was throwing people off off snap, you know, a program for poor people that gives them food for their kids I got up there and interrupted and yeah, I got arrested for that. The reason that the congressional hearing and the fact of your arrest and Pentagon spending and RFK Junr and lead poisoning all come together is because they are just merely the kind of latest expression of decades of activism And I just want for people who may not know. I think a lot of our listeners will have a kind of general sense that Ben and Jerryes is this kind of activist American brand. but they may not know much about the origin story. And I wonder if we could just go back in time and tell it a little bit So you were born in nineteen fifty one in Brooklyn. and I think in what in America you call seventh grade, you met a chap called Jerry. That's right who is Jerry Greenfield, still to this day your best friend extraordinarily by all accounts, not just effective business owner, but an extraordinarily kind and compassionate man Seventh grade means how old were you when you met Jerry? About twelve or thirteen. twelve or thirteen. And twelve or thirteen year olds in America in the early nineteen sixties were doing all sorts of things When did you and Jerry Greenfield decide that you were going to set up a company together Well When we were twelve or thirteen, we met in Gym class, we were the two slowest fattest kids in the class. Too much ice cream over probably And you know, we went through high school together and then went to college. I dropped out of college He went to four years straight and he applied to medical school and got rejected by all the medical schools. And I had tried to become Potter making pottery and selling it. and Nobody would buy my pottery So we were both failures And you know, we got together one day and we said, well, we We're certainly not getting anywhere. We were twenty six at the time We're not getting anywhere. Maybe we should start our own business And the only thing we really liked doing was Eating So it had to be a food business. and our idea was that we wanted to live in a rural college town. in the month Well, we didn't know it was going to be Vermont And we wanted to take a food trend that was starting off in the big cities and take it to a rural college town So the two things that were happening at the time were bagels and homemade ice cream So first it was going to be bagels and then we looked into how much the equipment costs and we couldn't afford it So we figured ice cream had to be cheaper and That's how we decided to go into the. There's a very particular thing about the ice cream, which is that you have a nosmia which is I'm alternatively abled. You alternatively You're alternatively abled, which means you have a very particular sense of smell. Is it a lack of a sense of smell? That's correct. You lack conventional smell but you have a remarkable facility for feeling within your mouth. That's correct. We call that mouth feeling in the food industry. Mouth feeling. And that is one of the reasons is it that Ben and Jerry's has this signature adventurous approach to texture because you wanted ice cream to have more texture than conventionally because of your sense of lack of sense of smell, but your mouth feeling, that right? Right. Food for me is mostly texture. And what I like about ice cream is contrast of the smooth creamy ice cream. Frunchy, big chunks You know, I do have somewhat of a minimal sense of of smell, a minimal sense of taste And so the ice cream is also very highly flavored so that I could figure out what the heck I'm meaning. And before we get into what you guys were like as entrepreneurs and as activists, To what extent was your worldview? So you bought in nineteen fifty one, you were seventeen During that great hey summer of nineteen sixty eight you had sort of Vietnam, your JFK earlier in that decade To what extent was your worldview shaped by that experience of of the nineteen sixties, that great baby boom deemographic surge, flower power and so on I think it was shaped quite a bit You know, People used to talk about All those dirty hippies peace and love, you know, derisively And I mean, The original peace and love guy is Jesus Christ. So Yeah, I believe that those are the the basic things that we need to be working for. So, you know, people have derisively called me, you know, the hippy businessman And just say you know I'm pretty much following the sermon on the mount. It's a religious inheritance in a way that you follow. So when you and Jerry set up this ice cream company, if you had to say, you know, a bit of it was about making ice cream and making a profit so you could make more ice cream How much of your motivation then was capitalist and how much of it was social activist. Well, originally, you know, we had no plan to become anything more than one Homemade ice cream shop in an old converted gas station And is that gas station still there? No, it got tored. Ted into a parking lot. O off course. It's a song about that. Oh course of course there is, yes.. So you had this kind of vision of basically one place, a filling station, which the two of you are going to sell some homemade ice cream How did it go from that to being this huge success and then this huge activist brand? Well, a lot of little steps At first when we opened up, we said, we want to be a community based ice cream shop. and we didn't really know what that meant. We wanted to run our business in the way that Regular old people walking down the street would like to see a business run you know, essentially a business that cared about the community as opposed to A lot of the normal mode of business, which is extracting from the community. the norm of business. and I'm not talking about small businesses here The norm of larger businesses is that It exploits the environment, it exploits its workers, and it exploits the community And we didn't want to do that. So, you know, as a little homemade ice cream shop We started producing free festivals for the community on evenings of free movies, but you still wanted to make money. I mean, this was a community based business, but you needed to have a bottom line. Absolutely. business has to be profitable in order to survive. otherwise you're out of business. So at what point you is obviously going quite well. you guys were it's worth saying, you know you must have been pretty good entrepreneurs. You must have been pretty good at running a small business because the business grew After a series of small steps, it grew fast enough A few years later in nineteen eighty five, you could determine I think it was that seven point five percent of your pret tax profits would go towards philanthropic causes. Is that right? Right. I mean, what happened before that was that you know, the business is growing and we're entering new markets. We finally figured out that If we pack the ice cream in pint containers, we can sell it to grocery stores. and that's what really turned the corner for the business. We were Jerry and I were having a hard time making a profit at the ice cream shop because over scooping U you know we realized that and it took us two years to figure out that that was the problem. Is over scooping giving people too much ice cream for their one scoop? That's exactly what it is. I mean, you're too generous with your scoops. That's correct You know, any other food product is portioned in the backroom where they have scales And in an ice cream shop, you're portioning it right in front of the customer And you get a lot of positive reinforcement for a really big scoop. Yeah. I you were generous guys. You wanted to be generous and then the kids come in and the parents having a hard day. And you think if I give them a little bit of extra, but that little bit extra was hurting your margins. Right, right, right. exactly. So anyhow we decided to start packing our ice cream in pint containers and That's what kind of turned the corner for the for the business. and The business was growing And we got to a state where We couldn't fill our orders because we were out of space and we couldn't store our raw ingredients because we didn't have enough space. It's the stage in a business's life when it needs a cash infusion to moveo to the next level, which for us would be building our first real ice cream plant And you know, there were all these venture capitalists that were coming to us. We didn't solicit them, but they saw, hey, here's a business that's growing. we can we can give you money and then you know it's essentially a few people who already have a lot of money who would like to have more money and instead What we wanted to do was to make the community the owners of the business so that as the business prospered, community would automatically prosper C They'd be owners. We wanted to sell it to our neighbors. So we had this first ever Vermont public stock offering. and sold out the offering. One out of every hundred Vermont families bought stock in B and Jerry's. and, you know, we would hold these shareholders meetings and you know, most companies are trying to do it at an inconvenient time and place because they don't want people to show up. We had it on the weekend and it was a big music festival. That was really good and then lots of people got to eat ice cream. That's correct. Yeah Eventually we did have a need for more money and So we held a national public stock offering. And that was when we formalized our giving in R the Beninger' foundoundation, which is independent from the company This was one of a series of steps really in the early years as you're growing that you took to make it an ethical company, not first foremost, you had to make a profit because you know companies need to. But you were very, very early on the fair trade movement. You moved into fair trade. We were fair trade before fair trade was fair trade. Exactly. And then there's a very particular relationship which I think is also worth highlighting, which is your relationship to a guy called Bernie Glassman of Grayston Bakery It's nice to see you smart. forgive me I should know' Bn Glman still with us is? No,'. I'm so sorry. Well these things happen. But yeah, tell me about it. Bernie Glassman was the boss of Gryston and Grston Bakery had a very particular approach to hiring because they conducted open hiring, which is that they gave people work without background checks, which could have been prejudicial, Is that right? That's correct. And you got your brownies from Grayon Bakery And what people should know is, you know, if they go and have a chocolate fudge brrownie, Ben and Jerry's right now They now know, having listened to you where the pint measure comes from, they know why the texture was important But they also might want to know that there's a certain history to those brownies, which is that you wanted to get into a partnership with Grayson. Why I met Bernie at the first meeting of what became the Social Ventures Network socially conscious business people that were coming together We're walking around this lake together. Bernie was a Jewish Buddhist nuclear physicist monk My kind of guy. My kind of guy sounds radical, ye So we're walking around and he says, Hey, I've started this bakery, Grayon bakery You know, I am in the Buddhist community. I am at the fringes of the Buddhist community because I'm looking to actually do work in the world and there's another section of the Buddhist community that's just looking to improve their internal So So he's at the very edge of it and he started this bakery. You know, I'm at the very edge of the business world because I'm trying to integrate these social concerns. we find each other at the edges of our worlds And we were just in the process of setting up a new plan to make brrownie ice cream sandwiches And I said, Hey, we're looking for a second supplier because The one supplier we have is this small business. We're setting up this new plant that's based on this product. We need a We need a secondary supplier if something else happens. you think you can make these thin, chewy fudgy brownies? And he said, Yeah, no problem So I said, Okaykay, you're hired. And we go through a lot of R and D trying to trying to come up with the right Brownie and Fally, we come up with it. We place our first order for half a truck looad. T ten thousand pounds You know, Bernie says All right, it'll take me a few weeks to make that amount, but you know, we'll make it and we'll ship it up. And so the first shipment comes and you know, they're in these twenty five pound boxes brring them to the line to make the sandwiches and it turned out All the brownies were stuck together And it was just one twenty five pound lump of browning. That take you a while. You know, so the people on the line, you know, they're trying to pull these things apart and they're going crazy and they're saying, what are you doing to us? What are you making us doing? And you couldn't do it. ull them apart and they would break apart And you know, for a normal supplier, we would have just shipped it back and said, Hey, we ain't paying for this But Bernie was no normal supplier. was no normal supplier So we couldn't nuclear physicist. We couldn't ship it back and say, you know, you got to eat the cost. they couldn't. They would have put them out of business So We ended up. That's how chocolate fudge brrownie ice cream was born took the little pieces that we could pick off and put them in the ice cream. and And now That's their major business is providing us with these little pieces of brownies that we put into the It's probably my favorite flavor and my kids favorite flavor and it all goes back to Bernie Classman The United States is about to mark its two hundred fiftieth anniversary. And so on the global story podcast from the BBC, we're telling surprising tales of American influence on the world stage and in ordinary people's lives all across the globe We have this ability to export our story, and a lot of people have bought it. I feel like the American Dream is alive but not well rom the BBC, it's the United States at two hundred fifty. Listen on bbusC d. com or wherever you get your podcasts. . I really hope you're enjoying this conversation with Ben Cohen, one half of Ben and Jerry's, if you are. And in fact, even if you're not, but I think you probably are, which is why you've got this far. Subscribe to this podcast on BBy Sounds, G on, do it. It's really, really easy. You just search for radical the Moragegin on BBy Sounds and you hit subscribe you will not miss future episodes. And by the way, if you do subscribe, make sure you've got your push notifications turned on and that way you will get an alert whenever we publish a new episode Never miss Thank you so much and back to Ben Cohen Before we get into some of the more recent disputes you've had and the kind of the messy situation, the legal situation with Uudle Lea and Magnum. Can I based on this rememarkable experience for your early years. the partnership with first Jerry and then Bernie Glassman, the fact that fair trade is involved from an early stage, the fact that you're trying to involve the community in your growth. Can I put to you a couple of principled objections to your position? Not becausecause this is my view, but ple. This is the way we try and to approach things on the BBC It's obviously one of the central questions of our time whether or not capitalism can win popular consent One of the cessentrial questions of our age today in twenty twenty six is whether or not capitalism can spread ownership rather than hoarding it And defenders of capitalism say if capitalism is going to be effective and popular, we need to spread ownership. And a lot of people say, you look at the American stock market today or American wealth, it's not be very good at spreading ownership. No But you know, there are other people And they tend to be capitalists who say, it's not our job spread ownership A job is to make Cff it And we would do that if we serve customers and we deliver for shareholders And that's good enough Can I just put to you a first principled objection to your deccades of activism which is that the job of capitalists is to allocate capital in a way that grows it And that the job of capitalists is to serve customers Dliver for shareholders and therefore deliver a profit. What do you say to that? Uh I say what you get The end result is a world where All the money is at the very, very top topop one percent And the society only serves that top one percent You know, the reality today is that business has become the most powerful force in our society. Originally, the most powerful force was religion And then the most powerful force came to be government, nation states. And today it's business. But the big difference is that those former most powerful forces had as their purpose to serve the benefit of the community. That's what religion is about. That's what government is supposed to be about. businessusiness never had that as its purpose. So Business is now the most powerful force And it operates only in its narrow self interest withithout a concern for the effect on the society as a whole. But those who follow Adam Smith and who read is the wealth of Nations goes back to seventeen seventy six, the that America was born two hundred and fifty years ago this year. would say that there's a particular kind of self interest, which is enlightened self interest And that one of the consequences of successful capitalism is yes even if those businesses are eventually about profits and growth. They only get that growth by delivering social goods Yes, those guys make a lot of money, a few make a lot of money Do it by delivering for society. That's the capitalist defense of capitalism. What would you say to that? I say it's not enough. I say that's not the only way that you can run a business You know, most people buying products from businesses in spite of the values of the business. They don't really like corporations because they know that corporations only care about one thing which is maximizing profits peopleople have a lot more concerns then just getting a pair of sneakers overnight. And they care about social issues and people spend A lot of time volunteering for various social service organizations. They donate money to it We've been brought up believe is that it's not possible for business to act in the interest of the greater society and still make a profit and What we've been brought up to believe is you deal with making money over there in the business world and you deal with your social concerns, one hundred and eighty degrees apart in the nonprofit And all that happened at Ben and Jerry's was that we found that it is possible to combine those things What we're doing is meeting another set of our customers' needs. the need to improve the quality of life for people. the need to Make sure that our societies are equitable, that we don't have millions of people living in poverty, that people have enough to eat You know, the amazing thing is that We didn't do it. to sell ice cream It sure does sell ice cream. So that's a second argument against your position. And I say this by the way, with tremendous respect for what you've achieved and we're about to get into this what you've achieved over many, many decades, really over half a century of activism There's some people that say that it's all cynical. For instance, I interviewed them great pleasure to introiew Gtaunberg a few years ago and she said that everyone wants have a picture taken Greta Tunbergs it makes them look like they're kind of ro environmental because they're pictu alongide Gret Tunberg, meananwhile'reum pollution on know, the waters around Indonesia. Do you think that in some instances, an awful lot of ESG commitments, environmental and social good commitments or diverse commitments are just a kind of corporate window dressing and are just a way of actually in the end, cynically trying to drive profits rather than do good in the world You know, there's both. For a lot of companies, it's not a value of them. It's not a basic value. They're doing it because It's trendy or they're doing it because The shareholders are requiring it, but It's not something that they want to do. I mean, it's kind of like DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion A the death well, it was the murder of George Floyd All these companies started saying Hey, we're going to hire more black people. We're going to you know loan to black people that we had previously been discriminating against. The one that got me was the number of companies that changed their social media avatar to a black square kind of you know twenty four hours of cursory activism by changing a little logo online. I just I thought that was a genuinely extraordinary thing. I thought it was actually quite a naive thing to do, if you like, that you would I feel that you could dupe your customers by changing your logo for twenty four hours and making it a black tick or a black square or whatever. but huge numbers of people did that. Yeah, they did. You know, they hiirered these diversity officers and And then Trump comes into office and he says, DEI bad, and they all got rid of their diversity programs And it's because it's not part of their mission. See, the third principled objection, if I may say, to your position is that some people would say I scream, Ben It ain't political And I know you've had to deal with this for fifty years or more, but I'm going to put it to you anyway. There was a very famous celebrated moment in British business a few years ago where one of Britain's most famous investors is a guy called Terry Smith giant of the city and very successful investor and he runs a fund called Funsmith. And he had his in twenty twenty two, he had his annual shareholder letter. And I think ironically it was about Unilevver He I think I don't misrepresent him here, but I think he was coming out of Unileva because he thought the company was being badly managed And he wrote in this twenty twenty two shareholder letter, which became a bit of a famous moment here in British businessiness company which feels it has to define the purpose of helllmanans and mayonnaise has clearly lost the plot And it was funny. The company which feels it has to define the purpose of Hellman's mayayonnaise has clearly lost the plot. and he pointed out that Hellman's mayayonnaise, a very famous mayonnaise brand has been going for since nineteen thirteen and that he said the point of Hllman's mayonnaise is to make salads and sandwiches nicer What do you say to that? I mean, obviously, you don't know the specifics of that circumstance though it was about you to leave it, which we're about to get to What would you say to the people who say the point of ice cream is to make nice ice cream. The point of mayonnaise is to make salads and sandwiches better What I say is that you can do both You can serve the needs of the community and make great Iice cream or mayonnaise at the same time. and You know, I mean, Jerry and I have always said, you know, we found a method of doing business both serves the needs of the society and makes money. and that's the way we like doing business. Other companies They don't really care about the needs of society. and if they want to do business like that They can Consumers can vote with their wallets. And do you want to support a company that doesn't really care and that is essentially part of the general economic machine that is shoving more and more dollars up to the top one percent, orr do you want to buy from a company that is trying to solve some of these social problems. You know, that that kind of gets to issue of the independent Board of directors when Ben and Jures was acquired by Unilever and I want to be clear that Jerry and I did not want the business sold. We wanted to keep it independent You know, according to SEC rules, Unilever was offering so much money for the business that the board of directors had to recommend the sale Is that so the SEC, the Securities and Echange Commission in America, which is the regulator, right? That Was it in retrospect a mistake for you to cede financial control in that way that allowed your company, Ben and Jerry's who are going to say, Ben B gener is to have to lose Bed Geres to Unilever U Yes, we thought that when we went public, we thought that we had legal what they call poison pills that would prevent the company from getting acquired They didn't work. It's so So yeah, I would say that that was a mistake, but because Jerry and I were so resistance to the sale and because Unilever wanted it so much they agreed to establish independent board of directors for Ben and Jerry's. So They didn't buy a brand. they bought a company And it was to be run as a wholly owned autonomous subsidiary that has its own board of directors And that board of directors has legal authority overver the social mission quality of the ice cream, the use of the trademark and a few other things and Really, the only authority that Unilever has is over finance and operations. How does Magnum come into this picture? Maybe it was Two years ago, Unilever announced that it wanted to sell off their entire ice cream division It's about one hundred brands all around the world So when that happened Jerry and I went to them because we had been having conflicts with Unilever and said, well, as long as you're getting rid of your whole ice cream business, why don't you separate out Ben and Jerry's so that we can get it sold to some socially aligned investors And Unilever refused to do that Eventually, what they did was they spun off their entire ice cream operation to the Magnum cororporation So the Magnum Cporation is now the owner von juries. I'm going to put to you in a moment what Magnum say. justust before I do that I could see the sort of smile and the glint in your eye when you were talking about you and Jerry setting up this filling station neearly fifty odd years ago in Vermont selling, first you thought about bagels, but it turns out they were too expensive to make It must be a source of sadness for you. You know, despite all the activism you do and we're about to come onto what you're doing in Trump's America, It must be a source of sadness to that the ice cream, which you set up is a community minded thing in Vermont years ago has come to this. B in juries you know, doing stuff that hasn't been done before, going against the mainstream has always been a struggle There have always been obstacles to overcome When the business first got sold to Unilever, it was An incredibly difficult, depressing time of my life Um It's the joyful journey for justice. I mean There are battles that you encounter. There are victories that you encounter and there are losses. mean It's an adventure. I mean, things go up, things go down, some things work, some things don't. It's the journey, not the destination, right? Yes. That That's this great Bob Dylan line where he says, I don't know if Bob Dylan was an influence on you, but Bob Dilaz' line he says, the artist is always in a state of becoming.ight There' this sense of it's always it's about the movement rather than the way you get to. Let me put to you if I may, Ben what Magnum say. Magnum say's a magnum ice cream comppany statement. Not often I've read out statements from a Magnum ice cream C company, but I do so with relish now. Recent steps to update Ben and Jerry's corporate governance are wholly aligned with the merger agreement and standard corporate governance across the organisation. Nothing more than that suuggesting our actions are anything more is just not true. they are not and never have been We remain committed to having a board by an independent director to continue its role of helping guide the social mission and brand integrity alongside Ben and Cherry's, CEO You're smiling But what of that do you disagree with that it's not true You know, the reason why Ben and Jerryes has become so successful because of this independent board of directors. which has guided the company to become this international global a billion dollar brand and the key to do that is the independence of this board of directors What Magnum did. I mean, as soon as Magnum became the owner of the company They fired the CEO who had been a thirty year employee who worked himself all the way up from tour guide to the very top because he was abiding by independent board, the direction of the independent board and then They stopped meeting with the independent board. They refused to meet with the independent board and they claim to have illegally removed all of the independent board members saying that they can appoint an independent director is kind of an oxymoron. The whole idea is that board is independent of Magnum. So when they say that they're fully committed to Ben anderia's continued success and its three part mission, economic, product and social You just fundamentally think they're not That's correct. It Is your position now that you think because you're a champion of ethical capitalism Are you saying to people who are listening to you now. who look up to you Don't buy Ben and Jerryess Are you asking for a boycott of Magnum products? There's like one hundred thirty thousand people that have signed this petition to ask Magnum to sell managers to this group of socially aligned investors. You think that that's the way forward rather than a boycott of Magnum products Well, first of all, when people first hear about it, they say, well, I should boycott Ben and Jerry'. And you know, we've been saying no Ben injuries is the victim here If you do want to boycott something, other magnum products, that would be the thing to stop buying in protest you know, there's more and more peopleeople asking us to startart a boycott And u We've been kind of resisting that, hoping that Magnum is going to see the light. It's harder and harder to hold back that impetus and You know, my my guess is that a boycott is going to happen at some time. Do you feel hopeful when you look at the Democratic Party today You' a very senior figure in the Bernie Sanders campaign of twenty twenty Do you feel at the national level The Democrat Party is getting it I don't think the Democratic Party is getting it I think that there there are a few politicians that that end up running as Democrats that get it You know, there's, of course, Bernie, there's M Dny There's a guy Tala Rico in Texas And a guy in Maine, Platinner that are running on platforms that are about justice and running the country in a way that benefits The huge majority of people in the country instead of The donors I mean, the politicians in general in the country don't represent the people. They represent the money. That's a huge problem. Outside of Mand Dani, who's a very particular case in New York or your friend Berdie Sunders Here iss the kind of politics which you espouse Given I don't know if it was nearly eighty million people voted for Donald Trump in his second term. is there an electoral winning strategy with the right leadership for the kind of liberal or more socialist politics which you would like to see in America Can you become president on that platform I think you can. You know, it's interesting. I was recently reading a book of quotes from Robert F. Kennedy called Make gentle the life of this world Looking at those quotes, what he was focused on was pretty much the issue of poverty and racism It was it was beautiful to read what he was saying about how In our country, we can't have people that are hungry We can't have people that afford a decent place to live. You know, he was running for president and as his campaign involved him visiting all these places of poverty. and so All the cameras came and you know, reported on that and let the rest of Americans see how so many of their fellow Americans are living So I have a weird thing which is I'm obsessed with great political rhetoric. And I spend the waking hours when I'm not feeding my children watching on YouTube videos of old speeches people like Joan Hulneri or Churchill or u great reforming politicians of the post war years But I think possibly my favorite is the concession speech at the nineteen eighty Democrat cononvention by Ted Teddy Kennedy Bobby Kennedy's brother, of course, JFK's brother as well. And this was when he failed to become the Democrat candidate in nineteen eighty to take on Ronald Reagan when Reagan got his first term, and he ended with the words for those whose care has been our concern Something to the effect of the work goes on, the cause endures, and the dream shall never die And with that, he left the stage. I get emotionally just thinking about it. It was one of the great speeches. poverty front and center. and I've always wondered why no one else tried to run on that ticket, putting poverty front and center And then Mamdani did it. And what's interesting is that Zor and Mamdani really started out, one percent of people were voting for him and no one backed him. And he talked about affordability very effective social media campaign and he won. I mean he actually won, which is a very, very striking thing Let's ask her the final question I'm advice to the future, Ben Cohes. I mean you got except for the crutches, you look very fit and healthy. you've got many years of activism ahead of, thank goodness But for people who are thinking about, I don't know, setting up their own company, for instance, or trying to become entrepreneurs or ethical capitalists, What have you learned that you want future activists and founders capitalists to know how they can really bake etthhical values into their corporate machines I think that you need to make the values part of the mission of your company The idea that there needs to be this separation between nonprofits and for profits I think is untrue. The reality is that you can make Just as much money, maybe more by serving those other needs of society att the same time you're making whatever product or widget or service that you're providing You know, businesses have advertising and marketing budgets and PR budgets And the purpose of those things is to make customers feel good about your company I think the reality is that just by serving the needs of society by addressing social problems that Cold want addressed What you create is this values alignment This relationship with your customers is based on shared values. That's the strongest possible relationship you can create with your customers And it's very, very durable. you know, versus the advertising mode, which is Oh, let's come up with a funny ad. let's come up with the cute ad. Let's come up with an emotional ad And it gets the customer to laugh or to, you know, maybe maybe feel good about the company, but It's ephemeral It's not a deep connection And shared values is an incredibly deep connection. And the other thing to understand is that you act on your values and Not everybody agrees with it You know, I've always said that There's no sense taking a stand on something if everybody already agrees with it, you don't need to take that stand. Business people, you know, traditional business people are always concerned, Well, I'm going to offend somebody You know, the reality is that your business is never going to get one hundred percent market share you know, Ben and juries might have F percent of the population that consumes our products That's enough. you know, that's a billion dollar corporation. That's amazing So you're not going to appeal to everybody Those people that you do appeal to have this incredibly strong connection with your brand It's this idea that people don't buy what you do, they bu by why you do it. and they're going to be much more motivated by the why. I mean, it's both. I mean,'t don't get me wrong. Yeah got'sice. it's going to be otherwise people exactly. You know, our customers are our listeners and they've sent in lots of questions which you're very kindly going to stick around for our bonus episode and answer. Before I put those questions to you, I just want to end with this I mentioned at the beginning that there's a lot of despair around And I can sense that you feel some despair at what you see around the world. But what gives you hope I'd say Mom, Donny and Bernie And I think that people in general want to care about other people. People in general don't want to kill other people. I think What is Aurd is that our leaders are saying that We can provide security for you. by threatening to kill millions and millions of people and having lots and lots of wars And that's going to create security. Bllshit There's enough money to go around I mean if we just used our our money to meet people's basic needs Everybody would be taken care of. It's amazing. and that would be true security instead of this idea that Well, we need to take half of our expendable income and spend it on war and threatening to kill literally millions of people. and that's going to give you Tue security Crezy Ben Cohen, it is such a pleasure and a privilege talking to you. Thank you so much for giving us some of your very precious time. Great to be here with you, Ao. Look, as you may have noticed from the previous forty nine guests, and Ben Cohen is he's guest number fifty, I'm a sucker for L love stories and nostalgia. and I do just think there's something incredibly romantic about these two mates from high school who are kind of basically hippie dropouts in their mid twenties who decide to buy a filling station, a gas filling station, that's what we would call a petrol station for about six thousand dollars in the mid nineteen seventies, they were going to do bagels, but bagels are too expensive Hence they did ice cream. And I had no idea until I read the brilliant brief from Oscar for this conversation Oscar who's on the other side of the glass over there, that the reason Ben and Joe's ice cream is so delicious is it's so full of contrasting textures. and the reason it's so full of contrasting textures is because Ben Cohen It doesn't smell very well. And so for him, food is not about smell, which is a big part of taste, it's more about textures. and that's why we have fish food and chocolate fudge brownie and so. I just think it's something quite swweet about that. but moving away from the sweetness no pun intended It was really interesting. I mean here' someone who's thought very hard not just about capitalism, but about human history And his idea that there were these three big stories that define, if you like, modern history. One was religion God Two is the nation state government And three is corporate power business money. And he argues that the first two were there because they wanted to give life meaning and serve the people nation states obviously. took that to a terrible extreme in the twenteth century, but that corporate profits and money are not about the people. They're about the owners And I think that's an interesting story. I think that's an interesting, if you like sort of third arc to modern history Obviously people who are defenders of capitalism and defenders of business would take very strongly against that. and they would say that the bigger the company, the more it successfully served people and monetizeed their demand for certain things But he has an interesting idea, Ben, which is that actually in the end, capitalism isn't serving the people, it's serving an ever diminishing number of people. And it's just true to say that if you look at ownership in parts of this country, if you look at ownership in America, profits are often Certainly at big corporations being concentrated in ever fewer hands. But it's really interesting that he has himself given up. on the Democrat Party And okay, I mean I don't want to reduce Ben Cohen's complicated worldview to a single word of socialism or liberalism, but he's on the sort of left of the Democrat Party. who worked with and for Bernie Saunders, and though he takes great hope from Zoran Manddani, he is someone who basically thinks the Democrat Party has abandoned the causes or the mission which he has espoused for fifty odd years. And what I would just put to him, which I think you heard theres I'm not sure at the moment that there is a national figure in American politics Winy mayabbe British politics who through socialism