Business Reimagined: Should Firms Have a Purpose Beyond Profit? (Ben & Jerry’s Ben Cohen)

**Amol Rajan** (0:00)
Just before we get into this week's episode with the remarkable Ben Cohen, one half of Ben & Jerry's, I wanna 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, and we listen to you as much as you listen to us. So, Kate Rayworth is coming on. Send us your questions about all manner of economic issues. The number is on WhatsApp, 330 1239480, 330 1239480, and email us on radical at bbc.co.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 Warsife used to say on The Generation Game, that was my childhood, Saturday night, goodness me, the conveyor belt. Didn'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 later this year.
I'm tempted to tell you what happened, but I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, because I'm not allowed to. But I would like to say a huge thank you to Eliza Filby, Dr Eliza Filby, to Ollie Dougmore and John Byrne Murdoch, 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 listen to those episodes as well. Thank you to Eliza, to Ollie and to John Byrne Murdoch. Now, just before I introduced today's remarkable guest, and it's a fantastic conversation, you're going to 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 you're, I'm told when you become pregnant, if you're lucky enough to get pregnant, suddenly everywhere you look, there's lots and 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 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 5,000 word essay on the website of his Tony Blair Institute, he referred to occupying the radical centre 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 needs 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 1940s. Fraser Nelson went on to say both left and right seem impressed by his radicalism. Then I turned to an interview that Jeremy Hunt, the former Chancellor gave to the Sunday Times and a journalist there, brilliant journalist called Josh Glancy.
Jeremy Hunt says, I've lost faith that this government, i.e. the Labour government, is willing to be radical in the way that the country needs. 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? There's a very good podcast with 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 & Jerry's. He was born in New York in 1951 He met a guy called Jerry Greenfield in a gym class at school when they were 12 or 13 The two of them made their way north to Vermont in the 1970s and they opened an ice cream emporium. There is an amazing story about how these two young hippies, I think I can call them that, in their mid-20s 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. Over the following decades, their ice cream brand and company became a vehicle for radical causes, radical politics. True to the counterculture of their youth, Ben & Jerry campaigned for socially progressive issues and against wars, even after shareholders in their company sold up to the consumer goods conglomerate Unilever in 2000 But 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 Ice Cream Company, with the duo saying that Ben & Jerry's mission, their brand values and independence are now being repeatedly compromised, something that the Magnum Ice Cream Company very strongly resist. Ben Cohen, one half of Ben & 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 is also campaigning frankly for Ben & Jerry's, the company that he founded 50 odd years ago, to be sold to socially aligned investors. So today we can 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 are going to hear, Ben Cohen does believe very strongly and he has given pretty much a lifetime to this idea that chocolate fudge brownie isn't just a flavor of ice cream, it's also a labor 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 of shareholders. But before we begin, a quick reminder, if you subscribe to Radical on BBC Sounds, you won't miss future episodes including Your Radical Questions, our listener Q&A, which is released every Monday and Ben Cohen is going to be answering your questions there as well. Right, on to this week's episode with Ben Cohen, who by the way, sorry, I realise this is a slightly longer intro than usual, but I've been away. I've been in a Scottish castle, so forgive me. By the way, he is our 50th guest since we began Radical. Thank you so much, not 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 way. I think we need some ice cream to celebrate.