Speaker A
Okay, Ben Cohen, ladies and gentlemen, of Ben and Jerry's. Geez.
Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's shares the origin story, challenges, and social mission behind the iconic ice cream brand.
Key Takeaways
- Ben & Jerry's was founded with a strong social mission alongside business goals.
- The brand started small but grew by staying true to its values and quality.
- Ben Cohen is actively involved in progressive causes and uses the brand platform for activism.
- Ice cream has cultural and political significance beyond just being a treat.
- Starting a business involves overcoming financial and regulatory challenges.
Summary
- Ben Cohen recounts his early life and how he met Jerry Greenfield, leading to the founding of Ben & Jerry's.
- They started the business in a small, converted gas station in Burlington, Vermont with limited funds.
- The company was built on three interconnected missions: social, product quality, and financial.
- Ben discusses the political and social activism associated with the brand and his personal involvement.
- The video touches on historical and cultural aspects of ice cream, including its significance in the USSR.
- Ben shares anecdotes about early business hurdles like permits and financing.
- The conversation includes references to progressive politics and notable figures like Bernie Sanders.
- Ben & Jerry's commitment to social justice is emphasized, including their stance on controversial issues.
- The video features informal, organic dialogue with humor and personal stories.
- Ben also talks about the importance of courage and activism in business and society.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Ice Cream Giveaway
- 03:01Ben Cohen's Background and Meeting Jerry
- 06:08Ice Cream History and Soviet Union Connection
- 09:48Founding Ben & Jerry's: Early Challenges
- 14:18Political Activism and Bernie Sanders
- 18:16Social Mission and Business Philosophy
- 22:00Personal Stories and Brand Values
- 26:00Closing Thoughts and Future Outlook
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Uh, live and alive in the building. Very excited. People are saying, "Ice cream, you scream. We all scream for ice cream."
Speaker A
Yeah, that wasn't a joke. No, I should have brought you ice cream.
Speaker A
Damn. I thought you would. I'm not going to lie. I thought you would.
Speaker A
You know, I thought I would, too. I mean, I don't know. I was, uh, look, I got some kind of magic. I got magic pieces of paper.
Speaker A
What is that? Oh my God. No. Turns into ice cream. No.
Speaker A
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, we got free. This coupon's good for anyone. Ben & Jerry's pint. Bag of cookie dough chunks. Let's go.
Speaker A
This is for your listeners. Okay. Do you want me to just show it and whoever gets it first?
Speaker A
Yes. Is that how this goes? Yes. Like I just put it on the screen?
Speaker A
Yes. Okay. Whoever gets the coupon first and takes it to a store wins.
Speaker A
Okay. Are you ready? There it is. Hold on. Boom. I hope that works. And if not, I'll just post it. I'll post it on my Twitter.
Speaker A
How about that? What? You post it on your Twitter and it works. I'll take a photo of it on my Twitter.
Speaker A
Another one. You're giving me so much free ice cream.
Speaker A
Well, because I forgot to bring you the sign pieces of paper here.
Speaker A
Okay. Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to have to come up with Ben's favorite ice cream for you.
Speaker A
Oh, wow. Okay. Well, I mean, you're—what? He's got Ben. He's got everywhere. He's got essential men.
Speaker A
What? The guy runs on Dr. with Dr. Pepper and—
Speaker A
All right.
Speaker A
All right. So, Ben, I have so much to talk to you about. You were detained briefly, right? You were protesting at the RFK Junior?
Speaker A
True.
Speaker A
Uh, you're very progressive. You're an OG. You're one of the OGs. Original gangster.
Speaker A
No, no, no. That doesn't mean old. That means you're the original gangster.
Speaker A
I'm an original. And I want to, I want to hear more about the story of how Ben and Jerry's came about, where you're from for the people that might not know. Let's just start it at the beginning.
Speaker A
Sure. I was born in 1951 in Brooklyn. I stayed there for a year and a half. My parents moved to Long Island. I stayed there till I was 18.
Speaker A
I met my friend Jerry running around the track in gym class. We were the two slowest, fattest kids in the class. We learned to like each other.
Speaker A
We stuck together. I dropped out of a whole bunch of colleges. Jerry went to four years straight, tried to get into med school and couldn't get in.
Speaker A
I tried to become a potter. Nobody would buy my pottery. We felt like we were both failures and we decided to start our own business.
Speaker A
Our idea was that we wanted to live in a rural college town and we thought we would take a food trend that was just starting off in the big cities.
Speaker A
And but you were there when ice cream was popping off for the first time ever.
Speaker A
That's crazy. Well, when homemade ice cream was popping off, you know, it was—I think it was Dolly Madison, the president's wife, who really started ice cream in the US, but that was before my time.
Speaker A
Have you ever seen in the USSR, they have like, they place a lot of importance on ice cream. There is this thing, I forget what it is. Hold on. I'm going to pull this up real quick.
Speaker A
And we do things a little bit non-traditional here for the record. It's just like it's a normal organic conversation. There's a lot going on.
Speaker A
Yeah. I mean, so if I have a pain in my neck and I just bought some off-brand Icy Hot, I can rub it on while I'm—I have pads and stuff, too, if you want one.
Speaker A
You got pads? Yeah, I can get you like a heating pad. You can slap it on if you want.
Speaker A
Yeah, man. I want to be like Hassan. For sure. Palumbier is a type of ice cream made with vanilla, cream, eggs, and sugar. Originally created in the Soviet Union in 1937.
Speaker A
And I think it was like a big, what do you call it? It was like a big deal where they wanted to make sure that all kids were able to get it.
Speaker A
Ice cream has had a history in politics as well, it seems, where even in the USSR they were like, we got to make sure that the kids and everybody else gets to have their treats, specifically ice cream.
Speaker A
Absolutely true. You know, I was actually in the Soviet Union at the end of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was setting up—he allowed you to have joint ventures and we set up a Ben and Jerry's joint venture.
Speaker A
No way. Yeah. That's sick. That's like in Karelia, the Russian state of Karelia.
Speaker A
Wow. That's amazing. Petrozavodsk. It's right on the border with Finland. Let's see. Okay, that's never mind.
Speaker A
That's—Whoa. Jeez. What the heck? I just read it. Ukrainian conflict.
Speaker A
So, you're wearing a Common Side Effect shirt. Before we get, before we continue with the history lesson about how you arrived at this ice cream behemoth and became known for that, you're wearing a Common Side Effect. Have you watched it?
Speaker A
It's one of my favorite shows. I love it. Yes, I watched the whole thing. I totally love it. They're in the middle of producing a new series, a new—is the second season or just entirely new second season?
Speaker A
Thank God, because some of those shows, dude, they just get cancelled even if they're good, especially if they're good. They usually cancel them, but it's amazing that you're repping them. You said you were hanging out with them earlier.
Speaker A
Yeah. Yeah. I just came from there. That's why I didn't bring any ice cream because I came straight from ice cream.
Speaker A
That's correct. They got the ice cream. You know those guys go to their freezer.
Speaker A
I don't know those guys. I'm going to go. I'm going to go. They're really good guys. You should see them. I mean, do you want an Icy Hot patch? Like you? But you know, I just put this stuff on. I think it'll work.
Speaker A
All right. Perfect. So, you start Ben & Jerry's like in the beginning. I assume that there were a lot of limitations, a lot of hurdles that you had to clear in the process, right? Did it or did it explode in popularity from the start?
Speaker A
Well, it's interesting. I mean, we started as this little homemade ice cream parlor, never expected to be anything more than that, in an old converted gas station that was falling apart in Burlington, Vermont.
Speaker A
And you know, in terms of getting business permits back then and health permits and the fire permit, all that stuff, it was a lot easier than it is now.
Speaker A
So there's kind of in that way there were fewer obstacles. The pesky nanny state hadn't intervened, right?
Speaker A
Bernie Sanders, the devastating, the dangerous mayor of Burlington, hadn't come in yet. He was just running for mayor for the first time as we were starting up. I guess we started a little before him.
Speaker A
And I remember being at the incredible huge celebration in the basement of Memorial Auditorium scooping ice cream for the victory party.
Speaker A
Wow. You were there from the beginning.
Speaker A
Yeah, that was crazy. I feel like he hasn't changed his look at all.
Speaker A
He hasn't changed. He has looked like he was this age back then.
Speaker A
It's true. He hasn't changed his look. He hasn't changed his politics. He hasn't changed his stump speech.
Speaker A
I know. It's the beautiful thing about Bernie is just how consistent he is. And you know, some people complain, you know, Bernie, you're always saying the same thing.
Speaker A
And he was saying, when we start having justice in this country, I'll start saying something different.
Speaker A
Yeah. So, you go through the process, not as many hurdles back then as there are now.
Speaker A
I mean, the big hurdle was we didn't have enough money.
Speaker A
Yeah. I mean, we had $4,000 a piece and we were planning on getting a loan from the SBA, but we couldn't get a long enough lease on this old gas station that was falling apart.
Speaker A
So, we couldn't get the loan from the SBA. And, you know, the bank kicked in another four. So, it was $12,000.
Speaker A
Mh. Started in juries. It's kind of amazing. I guess you can't really start a business.
Speaker A
So, we have a social mission, we have a product quality mission, and we have a financial mission. And the interesting thing about them is that they are written horizontally to make the point that no one of them comes before the
Speaker A
other. They're all interconnected. And staying true to those missions is what drive is what keeps Ben and Jerry's Ben and Jerry's.
Speaker A
You mentioned that there was uh some struggles that took place in the process. Do you want to elaborate a little bit on that?
Speaker A
Sure. In the early days uh the struggles were mostly internal. I would say let's take a stand on a particular issue. For instance peace dangerous prospect, an everpresent danger to the military-industrial complex. You're speaking a dangerous language, sir.
Speaker A
Let's suggest that the government take 1% of the Pentagon budget and use it for peace through understanding activities between the US and the former Soviet Union.
Speaker A
uh you know uh you because the people they don't have anything against each other and yet we were in the we were in this cold war.
Speaker A
I feel like that kind of dangerous language would have gotten you denaturalized back in the day if you were if you were a little bit younger or now. Exactly.
Speaker A
So we were coming out with a chocolatecovered ice cream pop on a stick and you know normally you write about oh you're going to taste the most amazing chocolate covered ice cream pop on a stick you ever had. It's so smooth,
Speaker A
so rich, so creamy, so chocolatey. And instead, we said, "Let's call this a peace pop and let's use the copy on the package to talk about making peace instead of war and shifting this money out of the Pentagon." And it was
Speaker A
incredibly controversial within the company that people were saying, our executives were saying, the people on the board of directors were saying that's not business's role. business should not be trying to advocate for particular national government policies and uh it was it was you know quite a
Speaker A
heated uh discussion and finally you know I I kind of forced it through and nothing happened. I mean people were saying that what's going to happen is you know we set up this new plant that's designed to make these uh chocolate
Speaker A
covered ice cream pops on a stick. if we come out with this packaging, uh, right-wing groups are going to pick it to supermarkets. The supermarket's going to take it off the shelf, and none none of that stuff ever came to to pass.
Speaker A
Yeah. Well, it probably helps if it's delicious. Yeah. Cuz if it was not good, it'd be easier to be like, "Oh, I don't want that. I don't want that at all." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, this is this is
Speaker A
something that I've seen in my own uh in my own industry as well. Streaming the internet like content creators like a lot of them I think are at the mercy of the broader audience and like whatever they're saying and they never want to
Speaker A
lead by example because they're afraid of like corporations pulling out. They're afraid of companies saying, "Oh, we're going to blacklist you." They're afraid of companies saying like, "Oh, you speak on this political issue. I don't necessarily think that's
Speaker A
appropriate for our brand." And for that reason, I think they choose not to make a stand. They choose not to take a a reasonable moral stand like you just described. And I feel like that creates an environment where uh without that
Speaker A
bravery, without that courage, that creates an environment where the only ones who are speaking loudly are often times right-wingers that don't have these sorts of fears, that don't care about these sorts of things, especially when the administration is like heavily
Speaker A
leaning on that kind of domination as well. Even on the corporate side, one of the things that I've seen is that the Trump administration is actively bullying corporations as well into taking positions against what they've defined is woke. Now, it's mostly it's
Speaker A
largely optics and I don't think that any of these corporations actually cared about anything beyond profits to begin with, right? So therefore, back in the day when they were actually uh pushing for uh ESG or DEI initiatives or any
Speaker A
number of different statements that they made, they were doing so in an effort to do marketing, but it wasn't genuine. But now they're moving in the right-wing direction. And I fear that this is creating a permission structure for
Speaker A
people for people to go, "Oh, yeah, being a bad person is actually a virtue.
Speaker A
Pushing these vices is actually a good thing." And I think it makes the entire environment less safe for everybody, not just marginalized groups in particular, but it just makes the uh the the environment that we uh that we're living
Speaker A
in more toxic overall. Yeah, I I think that's really true. I mean, the word that's been going through my mind lately is cutthroat. I mean, I think about Trump's, you know, original book, what was it? The Art of the Deal.
Speaker A
Yeah. And and in that book, he's saying, you know, there's so many people who say that a good deal is when both both parties come away from it thinking we did pretty good. We we feel okay about this. And he said, "No, that's [ __ ]
Speaker A
A good deal is when you get everything you want and the other guy feels over and he's running the country the same way." Yeah.
Speaker A
No. Uh uh he he doesn't care about cooperation. He doesn't care about respecting the other guy. He wants I mean when he talks about America first, he's talking about everybody else last.
Speaker A
Yeah. And it's and it's not even good for America broadly either. It's just good for him and his buddies, him and his like most loyal servants, basically picking apart what remains of this country's uh carcass for scraps. Basically,
Speaker A
dismantling the regulatory agencies and the like. Going back to Ben & Jerry's, one of the positions that I think or at least was very impactful for someone like myself was uh the the implementation of of BDS to a certain
Speaker A
degree at Ben & Jerry's when uh I believe you guys uh pulled sales from the uh occupied West Bank. Do you mind talking about that a little bit?
Speaker A
I'd love to talk about that, but I really would like to get some of that smart water that Oh, u absolutely. Do you want smart water? Any Oh, yeah. Any kind of liquid.
Speaker A
I'm not I'm not Well, I have I have sodas back there, too, if you want Mountain Dew.
Speaker A
No, no, no. I'm much better at uh just drinking water. Yes. All right. Thank you.
Speaker A
Sorry. Everyone always gets on me in the chat when they're like, "Why don't you offer your guest anything?" Now they're going to cook me. They're going to say, "You didn't offer your guest anything." Well, it's because I didn't bring you
Speaker A
any ice cream. Yeah. Tit for tat. Part of the deal. So, uh Oh, god. uh the Israel. So I want to be clear that what we were doing was not BDS. What what is that? Uh boycott divestments and sanctions.
Speaker A
Boycott, divestment, sanctions. Uh what we were doing was our ice cream was being sold in Israel. It was being sold through a lency that was also manufacturing the product there. and we told them that we don't want our ice
Speaker A
cream being sold in the West Bank uh because we disagree with how Israel is treating people in the West Bank. And somehow or other the ice cream showed up in the West Bank.
Speaker A
And you know, we went back and forth on that for a while and eventually we said, "Hey, we really mean it. You need to pull the ice cream, not sell the ice cream in the West Bank." And so then we
Speaker A
refused to renew that lences contract on that basis. And so the ice cream was not sold in the West Bank. And Unilver who is the parent of Ben & Jerry's uh you know owns Ben & Jerry's at the at the
Speaker A
moment was doing a lot of other business in Israel. many other brands, many other products and Israel kind of came to, you know, you know, talked to the Unilver guys, the the top top Unilver guys, they call the managers,
Speaker A
right? And they said, you know, I mean, if if you don't take care of this situation, you know, we're going to kick you out of Israel, you know, for all your all your products, all your businesses. And so what Unilver did was
Speaker A
they they sold the rights to Ben and Jerry's to an Israeli and now Ben & Jerry's in Hebrew. They didn't sell you you know you can't write it in English but is now available anywhere in Israel or the occupied territories I guess. And
Speaker A
but it's not called Ben & Jerry's is a is Hebrew. It's it's in Hebrew. It's Hebrew letters that I guess are pronounced Ben & Jerry's, but that was illegal uh according to the terms of uh the contract, the acquisition agreement
Speaker A
that was made with Ben & Jerry's when they bought Ben and Juries. You know, Ben and Jerry's has an independent board of directors who is responsible for the social mission and the essential integrity of the brand, marketing and
Speaker A
the product quality. And so this that move by Unilver usurped the power of the board. And so the board sued Unilver.
Speaker A
There was an outofc court settlement. And now the board is saying that Unilver did not live up to the out of court settlement. And so they're suing Unilver again.
Speaker A
Oh wow. Okay. That's the uh And I know this is still ongoing. That's the current That's the current They're like, "No, the West Bank has to get Ben and Jerry's." They were like They're adamant. I mean this is uh a
Speaker A
part of I think a much broader much more complex influence pedalling operation that has taken place uh in America to basically get as many people on board or to completely diminish like some of the most violent aspects of Israel's
Speaker A
occupation over the course of the past 80 years. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that specifically considering that you were also protesting against the Trump administration as well on this issue?
Speaker A
Cuz I don't know. Were you there with the Code Pink uh people or were you there separately?
Speaker A
When I was in DC? Yeah, when in DC. We were there separately, but Code Pink was being very supportive and they were they were very Do you know Madamea Benjamin?
Speaker A
I I know her very well. She's the goat. I love her. She's great. So, she was very helpful in terms of getting me into that committee hearing. Oh, she's the best at that.
Speaker A
I don't know how she does it. I don't know how she does she does it because for decades now.
Speaker A
They ought to know who she is by now. No, she just finds a way to sneak into everything.
Speaker A
Well, I guess it helps to be kind of small. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh but but Code Pink was also very helpful in terms of creating the video.
Speaker A
You know, when I was being walked in zip ties down the hall, it was Code Pink that was prompting me with the right questions and and doing the video taping.
Speaker A
Yeah. Uh I guess it's not taping anymore. Yeah. Video filming. Video clipping. They they're they're good with clipping.
Speaker A
That's what the Zoomers say now. They say clips. Clips. All right. Yeah. Video. They were they were clipping.
Speaker A
They were clipping. Another thing that a zoomer would say, I'm 34, but like a younger generation would say, "You had aura." That's the That's the new term. But if you're old.
Speaker A
No, no, no. When you're when you're getting when you're doing something cool, you have aura.
Speaker A
Aura. You had a lot of aura. That's what they say. All right. That sounds good.
Speaker A
Yeah, you got the clip. Well, you you got aura, too, man. I think we got aura together. We're blending our auras. You got the o goraura. You got the young giora.
Speaker A
I'm not. My audience says I'm so they say I'm old. You're like really old.
Speaker A
Yeah, they say I'm old. Well, what the hell am I? You're at that point you're you're that's why you're OG. You're OG. There's ank and then there's OG and you're you're OG status.
Speaker A
Do you want to talk about your experience in general? You're you're Jewish and you grew up in Brooklyn and and and then you know in Vermont as well. And I was wondering like how your opinion on Israel evolved throughout
Speaker A
time if you don't mind me asking. No be my pleasure. I went to when I was in like elementary school. I went a couple of afternoons a week to a thing called Center Island Jewish School. And it was mostly teaching you about Jewish
Speaker A
culture and teaching about how Jews had been discriminated against and teaching you the Jewish songs and the dances and the holidays. And they also taught us about Israel. And what we were taught was that, you know, after World War II,
Speaker A
uh, the Jews needed a homeland, a place they could feel safe. And it was Israel.
Speaker A
Israel was created for that purpose. And it was this really shitty land in the desert that nobody wanted and nobody lived on. And that's that's what that's what they got. And a land without people for a people without land. And then the Jews with the
Speaker A
help, you know, the Jews who moved to Israel with the help of, you know, the international Jewish community ended up creating this very vibrant, highly developed society and culture. And what we were told was that uh the Arab
Speaker A
countries, the pe Arabs who lived around them were kind of jealous of uh you know that that that culture. uh that development, that quality of life and uh so they made war on them and and so that's the way uh I thought
Speaker A
it was for a long time and you know I I understand that you know on both sides there's people that have screwed the other side and you know I don't know some you know one guy starts making a
Speaker A
war and then the other guy starts making a war. I mean I I I'm sure sometimes Arabs were responsible for some of the horrible things. sometimes Jews were responsible, but that's that's as I understand it.
Speaker A
So, what was a what was a a formative part of your development that made you feel like the way that this was presented to you initially might not have been entirely correct?
Speaker A
You know, I think it was only maybe maybe 20 years ago that I started understanding that whoa, there were people who lived there.
Speaker A
Mhm. And uh there were people that were pushed out. Um and you know, and then it then it didn't didn't sound so good.
Speaker A
Yeah. And and you know, I mean, I think that both the Jews and the Arabs have claims to that land, you know, some some biblically and some legally and whatever. But it it seems that they they need to find a way to get along. And uh
Speaker A
you know, I mean, what I believe strongly is that the mothers of of of people of of kids on one side don't want their kids to die and they don't want their kids killing the other guy's kids.
Speaker A
And I, you know, I mean, I'm I'm aware of, you know, all these efforts at peace and that that almost created peace and then, you know, some some extremist on one side or the other screws it up. I
Speaker A
don't know what to do, but the the one thing that I know is that you can't mistreat people. That uh forcing people in in Gaza and the West Bank to live in what the UN has called essentially an
Speaker A
open air prison is not going to work. That that people don't take that lying down. You know what what would happen if if if people in the US were forced by some occupying power to to live in that
Speaker A
sort. Yeah. I use the analog of aliens because there is no equivalence with the asymmetry of power because America is the most powerful nation on the planet and has been so especially in the aftermath of the dissolution of the
Speaker A
USSR. America won the Cold War. It's uncontested, right? 800 military bases all around the world. constantly in a state of permanent warfare, imperialism, military occupations everywhere or military bases everywhere that has masqueraded as a security contract that they have with all of these other
Speaker A
countries. And therefore, it's virtually impossible for us here living in the heart of empire, living in the United States of America to ever comprehend what that would look like unless it was like an infinitely more technologically superior force that could uh that could
Speaker A
control us in this way. Americans are so powerful, I think, that we invent enemies to be afraid of, whether it be Russia or whether it be China. We invent people to be uh afraid of that could do to us what we've done to the rest of the
Speaker A
world. But you're absolutely correct. If if there was some kind of superior force that came in and and displaced a lot of Americans in the ironically the same way that we did to the indigenous population on this land originally. uh and then and
Speaker A
then partitioned off different segments of American soil and created a a stateless system that had no contiguity for Palestinians or for the Americans in this equation. Of course, people would fight back. It's it's the perfectly uh understandable position, one that is
Speaker A
actually reflected by even former Israeli heads of state and even uh current contemporary Israeli heads of state, whether it be like the, you know, the heads of Shinbet and and numerous other people that have openly recognized if I was born on the other side of that
Speaker A
boundary, I'd be fighting too. I'd be a terrorist. I'd be a exactly the guy that they they call it that I call a terrorist right now. So I think um our understanding of it here in America is is very outdated and and that's I think
Speaker A
partially because of the experience that uh that you reflected on just now with like uh your your schooling and it's not just about uh the way uh American Jews are educated on Israel. It's just broadly the way that Americans are
Speaker A
educated on it, especially like Christian Zionists for example uh in in evangelical churches get uh a very different theological justification for why Israel uh must belong to Jewish people and Jewish people only in an effort to trigger the rapture. Uh so
Speaker A
there's different facets of American society that have a lot of political power that have been taught that uh this is a a moral battle, good versus evil, and you have to support the good guys in this process. And yet I would say in the
Speaker A
past 22 months, uh the the societal attitudes even in the western world has broadly shifted in the exact opposite direction. Do you feel like that will lead to a more meaningful conclusion as as someone who has been aware of this
Speaker A
for 20 years plus now especially do you feel like societal attitudes have shifted? Well, that you know it's it seems like just in the last month more and more people around the world and in the United States are understanding that
Speaker A
what Israel is doing aided and embedded by the United States is uh mass murder.
Speaker A
Call it slaughter, call it genocide. I you know I I don't think it matters much which term you use but it's intentionally massively slaughtering people and uh no it's it's the moral issue of our time.
Speaker A
Yeah. And and the people of the world say this is horrible. This is this needs to stop.
Speaker A
We will not allow this. And yet the leaders of our countries go against the population and continue to to kill, you know mothers fathers sisters brothers, sons and daughters, families just like ours in some other country in our name. That's what that's what gets
Speaker A
me about it is that they're doing it with my money and in my name.
Speaker A
Yeah, absolutely. I do feel like uh the the changing societal attitude at least is like going to cause a a generational divide that hopefully will lead to better outcomes for uh the Palestinian population uh down the line. Of course,
Speaker A
they are running out of time. They don't have time at this moment. One thing that I've noticed, and I'm wondering how you feel about this, is that this has become such a moral stain that is so undeniable, that's so undeniably wrong,
Speaker A
that it's almost making people in the Western world uh question whether we have a real democratic process at all.
Speaker A
Do you see that as a warning for American politicians in general that like if they don't?
Speaker A
Absolutely. We we we do not have a democratic process. We do not have a democracy. We do not have government of the people, by the people, for the people. We have government of the money, by the money, for the money. So, I mean,
Speaker A
a big part of it is we need to get big money out of politics. But, you know, I the most hopeful thing that I'm aware of is Mom Donnie, uh, you know, winning the primary in New York. and he he ran on,
Speaker A
you know, on a platform that says, "Let's take care of the actual everyday needs of people. Let's make it so that they can afford to have a decent place to live, that they can afford to buy food, that they can have a decent
Speaker A
livable wage." And these other guys, the Democrats and the Republicans have have have said they don't give a [ __ ] you you know have have mouthed the words, oh yeah, we care, we love the children, but you know, you look at the federal
Speaker A
discretionary budget, which I just happen to have with me here. Let me see. That's you just walk around with that.
Speaker A
Yeah, I walk around with the federal discretionary budget. Somebody has to, you know, somebody has to pay attention here.
Speaker A
What? Wait a minute. Here. Here. This is the 800 military bases. Oh, yeah. You got it right there. Hold that. Put it up there. you know where to put it.
Speaker A
That's amazing. And this is the discretionary budget. So the all that big red stuff, that's what's going into the Pentagon. And then you got veterans, which is essentially retired soldiers and injured soldiers.
Speaker A
And those little slivers, that's the stuff that we really want. That's the stuff that we really need. That's health care, child care, housing, education.
Speaker A
It's Yeah, it's it's absurd. So, let's talk about up in arms. You you you got the hat on.
Speaker A
I got the hat. Yeah, I got the hat. And you got some pamphlets with you.
Speaker A
You know, I got this shirt because, you know, I was just with those guys, but I was going to wear this shirt, but I'm giving it to you.
Speaker A
Oh, wow. Thank you so much. Congratulations. They gave me a shirt. I give you a shirt. It's kind of like passing it along.
Speaker A
Hell yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So, what what's uh what's Up in Arms' mission about? So up in arms is a campaign to get the issue of federal budget priorities of taking care of the American people of reinvigorating the
Speaker A
American dream making it possible to achieve the American dream by shifting money out of the Pentagon into those things that we care about. So the idea is to get that to be an issue in the upcoming presidential elections in 28.
Speaker A
Yeah, that sounds like scary talk. Someone's got to Someone's got to keep funding Rathon. Why don't you think about the What would you say to people who say, "Why don't you think about the poor shareholders that need a permanent state of warfare
Speaker A
to ensure that their shareholder value keeps going up year-over-year?" I'm telling you those those stock prices are rising humongously as as we conduct these wars and as we continue to give weapons to all these different countries. Uh they just love war is good
Speaker A
business. Yeah. Small business of Rathon, Loheed Martin Boeing, Northrup Grumman and many others. Now also we have the tech bros that are moving in this direction as well because they realize that's like the last that's the last uh part of of
Speaker A
the Imperial coffers that they could raid with very limited repercussions if any at all and you can have these expansive budgets and constantly uh drive up costs but of course yeah so I think of it as these pigs
Speaker A
feeding at the trough so right now you've got the legacy defense or weapons manufacturers Locked Bratheon, the ones you talked about, and they're all taking up the the whole length of the trough.
Speaker A
And now you got Palunteer and all these silicon, right? Trying to shove them out, trying to nuzzle their way in because they want to be sucking up all those bucks.
Speaker A
Yeah. No, absolutely. So, do you feel like the the Democrats are actually going to push back against this or do you do you feel like like where does the the lack of interest from the Democratic party overall come from in terms of of
Speaker A
saying the things that you're saying? Because I I I would say that you are by no means a radical. I I would say that I I definitely have a lot more radical probably a lot more radical opinions that that some Americans might not even
Speaker A
initially get on board with, but this is not radical at all. This is very reasonable, right? This is an incredibly reasonable proposition uh to do right by others. I believe it was I think it might have been Eisenhower who said uh
Speaker A
you know every every dollar being spent on a bomb could be spent on books or could be spent on bricks to to make houses here and yet we spend it over there. We spend it on on uh weapons of
Speaker A
war instead. How do we get back to that mentality? Every gun, every rocket launched, every missile fired signals in the final sense a theft from those who are hungry and not clothed, those who are something or other. That was that
Speaker A
was Eisenhower's thing. Yeah. Uh so how do we get back to that? I think we get back to it by electing politicians that are not mainstream Democrats or mainstream Republicans. I mean, everybody realizes that the Democratic Republican parties are
Speaker A
broken, that they're corrupt, that they're about self-preservation, that they're not about what's good for the country. They're about what's good for the particular politician to get elected next year. You know, I mean, Bernie was running and he, you know, the DNC, you
Speaker A
know, kind of tilted the table against him. But if the DNC had not done that, he would have got the nomination and I believe he would have got the presidency. I mean, because yeah, you know, Trump got it because what
Speaker A
people wanted was none of the above. They wanted No, I don't want a mainstream Democrat. I don't want a mainstream Republican. I don't want more of this [ __ ] Because year after year, they keep on saying, "Oh yeah, we care
Speaker A
about you. We care about you. We care about you." But year after year, things get harder and harder and harder in the richest country in the history of the world. I mean, we have enough money. You You can't
Speaker A
believe we can't conceive of the riches that this country has. I mean, we have a trillion dollars a year that's now going into the Pentagon. That is a little under $3 billion a day. I mean, just on nuclear weapons, we're spending over
Speaker A
$100,000 a minute. What could you do with that money? I mean, for less than 5% of the Pentagon budget, you could eliminate homelessness, you could eliminate starvation and food insecurity, not only in our country, but around the world. I
Speaker A
mean, there are three million kids a year that are literally dying of starvation. Yeah.
Speaker A
For $50 billion, that's 5% of the Pentagon budget, we could provide food security for every one of them and provide food security for everybody in the United States who doesn't have enough to eat.
Speaker A
And and we make the decision to instead let's build more nuclear weapons. I mean, what would Jesus do? I I mean, what does that do to the the soul, the spirit of our supply side? Jesus. Jesus.
Speaker A
Yeah. Like Al Franken's uh Al Franken's joke. It's just Jesus would uh Jesus would not cure the lepers unless they were in their in their network of coverage. That's how he that's how he operates. You don't understand. American
Speaker A
Jesus is very different. I mean, it's it's a cliche at this point, but yeah, if Jesus came back to the United States of America, they they'd probably kill him. They'd be like, "You're a you're a Mexican communist." Yeah.
Speaker A
Get out of here. What are you talking about? That woke stuff. I think that's just like aesthetics.
Speaker A
Anyway, I don't think any of these guys actually truly are believers, or at least they they believe in a very distorted version of of uh what they perceive Christianity to be, prosperity, gospel, and an evangelical format. Uh, it's just it's a permanent state of war.
Speaker A
Not helping the poor at all. It is a permanent state of war. I mean, how can you possibly say that we're at peace if we're spending a trillion dollars a year on weapons on the military? I mean, we're not we're not at
Speaker A
peace. We're preparing for the next war. Yeah. It's it's it's absurd. I mean, is this really the best our leaders can do to solve problems by killing our brothers and sisters in other countries?
Speaker A
Yeah. But again, I think it goes back to the profit. It it goes back to the profit incentive, which is that it totally goes this is the one industry. I mean there are other countries out there who spend far less
Speaker A
in their uh in their military development that end up doing far more in terms of developing their countries with I mean there's many reasons to criticize China certainly in their own internal affairs. They've they've done a litany of things that I uh personally
Speaker A
find unfavorable. Having said that, they are also they they also engaged in tremendous development internally uh over the course of even the the war on terror sliver of American history. They didn't do much of that and instead they
Speaker A
just kept building highspeed rail and rapid urbanization and tremendous infrastructure. And I always point to that to not say like, oh, we should be more like China, even though America does actually uh seemingly take on more of the social repressive aspects uh of
Speaker A
of Chinese governance in an exaggerated manner, as a matter of fact, and apply it here. Um, but I I wish we would also focus on internal development, rebuilding our infrastructure, and instead of relying on the initial gains made by the New Deal, like we've been
Speaker A
eating off of that victory for a very long time, for far too long. That's why all infrastruure is crumbling.
Speaker A
I mean, I mean, China reduced poverty in their country by I don't know. I mean, some Yeah. 800 million people.
Speaker A
Some huge percentage. I mean, while in our country, the spread between rich and poor gets wider and wider and wider.
Speaker A
Yeah. So, that's that's uh that's what I always point to. That's always present. But then people hear that and they go, "Oh, you love China. Why don't you go live there?" It's like, "Okay, maybe." I mean, if the government keeps doing what
Speaker A
it's doing, who knows? I I mean, I I mean, there's problems in our country. There's a lot of screwed up things that our country does. I'm sure there's a lot of screwed up things that China does.
Speaker A
Yeah. But the big thing that the US does is it says that we must have full spectrum dominance militarily. That any country that starts to develop economically or starts to develop militarily is automatically considered to be an enemy.
Speaker A
It's the official policy of the United States to not let any country become developed militarily or economically.
Speaker A
And as soon as one does like China, that for that reason only, China becomes an enemy.
Speaker A
Yeah. They produce they produce 30% of everything that we consume. So it's it's additionally crazy. And you see that with what Donald Trump has been doing now with this like universal tariffs regime. I mean, you're a business guy. I
Speaker A
was wondering what your take has been on on the way this like u almost nix Nixonian madman theory posturing that Donald Trump has has implemented in in terms of global trade even though we designed it in a way that benefits us
Speaker A
benefits the American consumers where we just basically hand off IUS to the rest of the global south and then we extract their natural resources and also their incredibly cheap uh incredibly affordable labor that we've kept to a uh
Speaker A
reduced level in perpet Now, Donald Trump is saying for no real discernable reason, we need to restructure global trade and we don't have the manufacturing base, I don't think, to to protect some kind of domestic uh domestic manufacturing. So,
Speaker A
I'm all out of ideas as far as like trying to figure out what Donald Trump is doing, but I wanted to hear your perspective on it.
Speaker A
What's he doing with global trade? You want me to try to figure out what Trump is doing?
Speaker A
Yeah. I'm not a business guy. I'm I'm I'm a Twitch streamer. So, well well I you know the way I see it is that when Donald and I were growing up, we're we're kind of contemporaries. Uh manufacturing having a job in a
Speaker A
manufacturing business in as it in a in a manufacturing operation was a secure job was a good job. You had good pay.
Speaker A
You had good benefits. You had a good pension. there were unions and that was and so people were making more money they had a better quality of life and he thinks that by bringing manufacturing back to the US that that'll come to be
Speaker A
again the problem is that manufacturing has now become so automated that you go to these manufacturing plants and there's hardly anybody in them yeah it's all robotics yeah and not only that but also uh my advocacy always been I've in I've been
Speaker A
in Japan a bunch of times at this point and when I go there, one of the things that strikes me is that there's a lot of uh the population is very old and there are a lot of old people that still work
Speaker A
in jobs that uh don't necessarily require a person to work at all. Uh the example that always comes to mind is like the the guy that sits um right outside of like uh you know some kind of like utility truck that is working on
Speaker A
the side of the road and just like waves people away with a wand. That job could be delegated to a cone with a light on it, but there's a reason why that person is doing that job. It's almost like the
Speaker A
Walmart greeter job, right? Where they do that not because that's a redundancy that needs to be eliminated. They do that deliberately so that like that person has a job. And the example I always think of is automation is not
Speaker A
necessarily a bad thing. It's not supposed to be uh a a way to displace the existing labor force. It's supposed to eliminate the burdens of the labor force so that instead of working, you know, 8 hour shifts, you work 4 hour
Speaker A
shifts. But I think our our mindset on this is or has been because we're constantly invested in improving profit margins even though profit rates have a tendency to shrink is to displace the most malleable aspect of of commodity
Speaker A
production, which happens to be labor. Constantly depressing wages, looking for uh secondary markets where we can move manufacturing to. That's what global trade has uh created for the American labor force. And ultimately, my suggestion always is automation isn't
Speaker A
necessarily bad. Domestic manufacturing isn't necessarily bad. It's just that we have to ensure that there are still people that are working even if they're not really doing anything. There's just a person that's just sitting there just to collect the check for sanity, for
Speaker A
social cohesion, so that the system doesn't collapse. Well, there's definitely stuff that needs to be done.
Speaker A
There's more than enough jobs that need to be done. You know, you think about the the infrastructure, there's a lot that needs to be done there. We need more teachers. We need more childare workers. So, but but I I understand what
Speaker A
you're saying that automation is reducing the number of people that's required to make stuff. And what should be happening is that people should be working less hours and getting paid more money per hour. The problem is that the
Speaker A
workforce is becoming way more productive. Yeah. Thanks to robotics and computers and whatever, but all that productivity, all the profits from all that pro productivity is going just to the 1%.
Speaker A
Yeah. And no, that's what we need to change. I mean, you know, why don't we have how about having like a a rational minimum wage in the country? I mean, the minimum wage program the minimum wage is $7.50,
Speaker A
right? I mean, there are people that are working and getting $7.50 an hour, which is ridiculous.
Speaker A
Yeah. One thing I've always fantasized about is that we already have a massive government jobs program. It's called the military. And I I wish that like the DoD would be in a future utopian society.
Speaker A
The uh DoD would be restructured into simply just like the Army Corps of Engineers. Instead of like instead of holding arms, they hold shovels and pickaxes and they build roads and and are constantly working not to, you know,
Speaker A
kill children overseas, but instead constantly working to build bridges and and homes. And I think that makes a tremendous amount of sense.
Speaker A
Yeah. I think the people that end up going into the army would appreciate that a lot better.
Speaker A
Yeah. I mean, they're going into the army because they genuinely want to serve. They want to have meaning in their lives.
Speaker A
Yeah. Or because they're poor, right? And they want to pay for college. That that that's that's another big part of it. Both are true. So why not why not get that by actually serving the country and making the country better as opposed
Speaker A
to killing or threatening to kill people all over the world. Yeah. After Walmart, the military is the largest employing body in this in this country if not well not the planet. I think the Chinese military is larger but
Speaker A
that's it. And I don't know what it will take to have this kind of like dramatic restructuring, this redesign, because I feel like what I see from American politics has been this endless sea of cruelty and lack of interest in moving
Speaker A
this country in a positive direction. And that I think is devastating for a lot of younger generations that still have that I guess naive where they think they can just go out in the streets and protest and maybe even make change
Speaker A
happen. And our system basically is designed in a way where we just stamp that naive out. We stamp that hopefulness out and then we make people feel like uh change is never going to happen in the positive direction. And uh
Speaker A
it pushes people in the direction of nihilism. Well, I I think you're right. I think that like I say, Bernie was a force against that nihilism. And I think that Mandami is and then there's another guy in the Midwest,
Speaker A
Omar Fate, right? I'm going to be doing a collaboration with him as well, like I did with Zoron, uh early on. Uh I'm going to be flying out there.
Speaker A
Oh, great. Yeah, that's beautiful. So, so I think you know what what Up in Arms is about is about getting the issues that we're talking about into the presidential debate and you know and and the big hope is that we're going to establish a
Speaker A
constituency of voters that are going to say, "Hey, I'm I'm going to vote for uh a candidate who's talking about making America a more compassionate place and meeting the actual everyday needs of our people instead of shoving it all into
Speaker A
preparing to kill people all over the world. If we can get uh a constituency of people like that, you know, someone's running for president, he wants votes and he or she and that that's a way to shove them in the direction that we want
Speaker A
them to go in. But I mean, when you talk about nihilism, I mean, what you can either fight it or you give up.
Speaker A
Yeah. No, or you say you either fight it or you say, "Okay, pe, you know, I'm I'm in a country that's gonna screw a whole bunch of people and going to keep paying my taxes and there's nothing I can do
Speaker A
about it." I That's the Well, and I'll tell you for I mean, you mentioned young people, there's this group called Denters. Uh the website is we are dissenters.com and they are amazing. They're they're organizing on college campuses. They're
Speaker A
multi-racial. They're multi-gender. They're they're working on exactly this same issue. And uh that's what we need to do.
Speaker A
Yeah. We need to we need to rise up and and continue pushing back no matter what the letter is next to the congressperson because I feel like a lot of people find themselves falling into the team sports mentality and they think like oh well
Speaker A
the Democrat is they're they're good by design definitionally they're like morally better. And while there is truth to that, if you compare all of the policy outlines of the Republican party versus the Democratic party, certainly there are plenty of instances where the
Speaker A
Democrats are not as bad as the Republicans. And yet they still actively, in my opinion, especially we saw this with Kla Harris campaign, they they run in the direction of the Republicans. And then they end up reflecting refle uh and and uh
Speaker A
reiterating Republican policy from four years prior that they had run against. Kla Harris did this with immigration for example and and so did Joe Biden. Joe Biden ran on a promise of in the first 100 days that he was going to uh push
Speaker A
for amnesty for all of the the uh non-citizens that have been living on US soil. Conditional amnesty is always been more popular than mass deportation. And yet that never happened. They completely dropped that. And of course, the Republicans never stopped pushing lies
Speaker A
that immigrants were not simply people trying to make an honest living in this country that play an incredibly important role in the American economy and in the social fabric that keeps that binds us that keeps us together are uh
Speaker A
you know active members of our communities and a part of American culture, but instead violent parasitic forces that must be removed using Nazi style rhetoric. And then the Democrats looked at that. They looked at the polls and they saw that the societal attitudes
Speaker A
were shifting in the direction of white nivist anti-immigrant sentiment and they said, "Oh yeah, well they're right.
Speaker A
Immigrants do constitute a national security threat. We are going to be the adults that actually do the the border wall. Trump is not serious about building the border wall." Which I thought was such an ineffective way to advocate to win an election by just
Speaker A
conceding on a major issue to your opponent on their strongest uh issue. Yeah, I totally agree with you. And and you know what strikes me about the immigrants coming to this country? If you look at the history, they're mostly
Speaker A
coming from countries that the United States [ __ ] over in one way or another.
Speaker A
Yeah. I mean, either we overthrew militarily their governments. Reed Smemedley Butler who talks about how war is a racket and how he was overthrowing governments and uh you know this guy was the most decorated marine back in his time and
Speaker A
he's talking about he he was doing it all for the banks for the big banks and for the big corporations. Yeah, that's the other thing of course is that like there's no problem with immigrants coming here, but like if you if you even
Speaker A
wanted to in a positive manner uh make sure that the the host nations were like or the the nations where people are coming from were were livable and and habitable, then you would stop interfering in their affairs and instead
Speaker A
only positively intervening. And by that I mean like actually help rebuild their infrastructure and allow these countries to thrive.
Speaker A
Exactly. I I mean I I came here I'm very I'm very privileged. I am an American citizen. I was born on US soil. I am what is known as a anchor baby and something that Donald Trump is trying to
Speaker A
take away from from uh the next generation even though it's unconstitutional. Anyway, and even with all of that fortune, even with all that privilege, I have uh you know family members that live in the United States of America beforehand as well. I had
Speaker A
been to the United States of America. I learned English at an early age. I'm a native speaker even though it's my second language. And I always thought like my own journey is to the United States of America. When I was at the age
Speaker A
of 18, I came here for college. That journey was so easy in comparison to the treacherous trek that so many people have to engage in where they leave their entire lives and their livelihood behind. They leave their culture behind.
Speaker A
They leave their families behind in many instances just to make a dollar in the United States of America. Uh so uh in spite of that privilege I like there were still hardships that I experienced you know loneliness and changing
Speaker A
everything about uh how I lived and and what I knew about the world when I when I came here to a totally different environment. So I always thought I always think about like how people who are far far less fortunate than myself
Speaker A
came here and that that's what uh gears me to to to advocate for uh migrants in general and the humanity of migrants in general and to advocate for amnesty in general cuz like I just can't understand how people look at all that and think no
Speaker A
these guys are actually here to you know destroy the country or something. Yeah. What what I don't understand is what what is the problem with immigrants? I mean, how how are they making our lives any worse? I mean I I
Speaker A
mean, yeah, I I don't I don't I mean, my understanding is that unemployment is really low in the country. Uh they're not stealing our jobs. It's jobs that Americans refuse to do and they pay taxes. I I don't I just
Speaker A
don't understand what the why what's the issue? It's just scapegoating because because if you don't address the real if you no one wants to address the real problem which is corporate consolidation and endless greed and endless war uh as a as
Speaker A
a consequence of endless greed uh and therefore they have to look for new villains. I think I mean we already know historic examples like in Nazi Germany where they presented uh the the uh villains of society rather than
Speaker A
addressing the root causes they turned around and scapegoed Jewish people and political dissonance like socialist trade unionist communists said it was uh Jewish bulsheism that was the real threat to the superior German culture uh that was uh you know destroying it from
Speaker A
within with degeneracy. A lot of these points of propaganda are damn near identical and have never really changed all that much for Republicans since the aftermath of World War II. I would say we very quickly engaged in the Cold War.
Speaker A
And in that process, I think we just never really gave up our our uh fascist tendencies and uh and here we are. I think it's like unfolding. The logical conclusion of all of that enmity is the Trump administration.
Speaker A
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I think what's missing and I think what is I don't know an intrinsic part of the American people is compassion and spirit and and a soul of and empathy. I I mean
Speaker A
they're starting to say that oh empathy is really bad thing. You should I can't believe that they they they're being whole ass villains. That blows my mind. people because empathy gets in the way of you know give it all to me and [ __ ]
Speaker A
everybody else. Yeah, we don't care about those other people. [ __ ] them. They say violent empathy or toxic empathy. That's crazy. I call it vice signaling cuz conservatives used to say like, "Oh, you're virtue signaling, which is uh you know, signaling that
Speaker A
you're more virtuous than you actually are." The underlying premise is you must be faking it, right? But it still basically is an admission that like the thing that you were advocating for is virtuous. Nowadays, I think conservatives are vice signaling where
Speaker A
they they say things like suicidal empathy or toxic empathy and and uh actively push for toxicity, actively push for more violence and and more harm to others. it turns into this incredibly immoral proposition that they're running off of which is like being a bad person
Speaker A
is actually a virtuous thing. It's a good thing, right? That and I don't understand how people don't see it.
Speaker A
That's the horrible part. I mean, I I think that most people believe that there is some kind of spiritual aspect to our lives. As you give, you receive.
Speaker A
As you help others, you're helped in return. And it's the same for countries. As you give, you receive. As you help others, you're helped in return. I mean, the major way that the US interacts with the world, especially now that, you
Speaker A
know, Trump has cut cut off, you know, the measly aid that we used to give out.
Speaker A
Yeah. The major way we interact with the world is at the point of a gun.
Speaker A
Yeah. 800 military bases all over the world. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna switch uh because you've been here for for a while now and I want I want to take up more of your time and thank you
Speaker A
so much for coming on. My pleasure. Uh this has been a wonderful conversation. Uh we got to switch gears and talk about ice cream.
Speaker A
Oh, all right. That sounds like I'm a major ice cream fan. I love ice cream sandwiches. What do you think about Cuz I know Ben and Jerry's did like low calorie ice cream for a little bit. I don't know if you guys still do
Speaker A
it. Uh, I think that was a a passing fancy forced on us by our corporate.
Speaker A
Okay. So, you're you're not on board with that. What do you think about all of the uh the protein infusion with like uh the the there's this like new wave of all forms of protein? You don't believe I believe a treat should be a treat. I
Speaker A
believe ice cream should be rich, creamy. I think it should be uh you know that there should be calories to it.
Speaker A
There should be butter fat in it. You're just not supposed to make it your meal for three meals a day. You know, one meal, one meal a day is okay. I mean, I once worked on this caloric daily intake
Speaker A
thing where, you know, if you only substitute a pint of ice cream for one meal a day, you could eat lettuce and rice the rest of the time and you'd be fine.
Speaker A
Damn it. I was going to I This was all a trap. I I brought you in here so I could convince you to to not only You brought me in here because you thought I'd bring you ice cream.
Speaker A
Yeah. Well, that but then also I brought you in here cuz I thought I could convince you to do not only do low calorie ice cream again, but also on top of that do protein ice cream.
Speaker A
Oh god. I need I need my protein. But but ice cream is supposed to be an indulgence. Yeah, it's it's supposed to be, you know, it's like I was once at some restaurant in uh in France and you
Speaker A
know, some American some other American tourist is at another table and you know, he's giving his order and he'd say, "Can you hold the butter?" That's crazy.
Speaker A
And the chef comes out and he says, "What are you crazy?" Right. Just like you.
Speaker A
Okay. That's crazy. That's crazy. You're right about that. No, no, no. I I I get that. I'm just I like to put protein into every meal that I have because I need a lot of protein.
Speaker A
All right. I'm a big boy. Shake it on the top. Use protein sprinkles. Okay. I'm going to That's what I'm going to do. We're instead of instead of convincing you, it seems this is you're an immovable object. That's correct.
Speaker A
On this This is your This is No. No. And I'm not into tuna fish ice cream. I'm not into chicken ice cream.
Speaker A
I'm not any of those savory ice cream things. No. No. No. I would never. That's No.
Speaker A
No. That's a bridge too far. doesn't push too far for sure, but you know, it's just I mean, protein, you know, that's close to chicken.
Speaker A
I You can make it You can make sweet protein. A lot of a lot of the protein is sweet. You put a little bit of whey in there.
Speaker A
Okay. Ice cream sandwiches. Best version of consumption, I think. What do you think? I'll tell you my my secret pleasure at night.
Speaker A
Okay. Uh, is mostly good after, you know, between 1000 p.m. and and 1:00 a.m. Vanilla ice cream on wheat thins.
Speaker A
Oh, wow. Open open face. It is sweet, salty, crunchy creamy. Wow. It's everything you've ever wanted in an ice cream.
Speaker A
That's brilliant. I never thought about that. Thanks. That's That's amazing. Yeah. Okay. Hell yeah. That's a game changer.
Speaker A
People are going to try that. People are going to try that after this and be like "Damn you know, and we thin sales are going to shoot through the through the roof and you got a lot of listeners.
Speaker A
That's why you're OG." Okay. Uh, is it I don't know if this is like asking you to pick through who who's your favorite children, but like do you have a favorite flavor for of Ben and Jerry's?
Speaker A
Uh, you know, I I move around, but uh I stay with Chubby Hubby. Uh, New York Super Fudge.
Speaker A
Let me look this up. Cherry Garcia. Yeah, people were saying Cherry Garcia. I like that.
Speaker A
You know, reason, you know, there's also this uh thick mint that has uh you know, this really large thick uh chocolate uh disc on the top of what they call chocolate ganache, I believe. I think that's really good.
Speaker A
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, they're saying fish food. Fish food. Fish food is the last flavor that I was personally involved in.
Speaker A
Okay. I will say I think chocolate chip cookie dough on top forever. Yeah, I'm a I'm a huge like I am a a loyalist of chocolate chip cookie dough. It's because when I was younger I think my parent like I loved eating chocolate
Speaker A
chip cookie dough and my parents uh told me I don't know if it was a lie or not but like they were like oh you'll get worms or something if you eat the cookie dough. And I still ate it. I would still
Speaker A
I would still go in the fridge and I just eat the chocolate chip cookie dough. I even preferred almost to like a cookie. I love a chewy cookie, but a chewy chocolate chip cookie, but cookie dough is my thing. And uh you guys even
Speaker A
have like I think a cookie dough that you would just sell. Yeah, you could just get a bag of chocolate chip cookie dough.
Speaker A
So good. Uh you know, Ben and Jerry's invented chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.
Speaker A
No. Yep. Yep. What? Yeah. Amazing. I mean, no. It's It's amazing. I mean, there was somebody who invented vanilla ice cream, somebody who invented chocolate ice cream. Ben and Jerry's invented chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, and now it's become like a standard for
Speaker A
every brand. That's amazing. I'm sitting across from the inventor of the greatest ice cream flavor.
Speaker A
Well, I have to say it wasn't me personally. You played a role in I mean I mean there was a guy who was there in the shop making ice cream in uh a 5gallon rock salt and ice freezer.
Speaker A
Uh-huh. That's how we were making ice cream back in those days. And there was another person who was baking chocolate chip cookies. And you just fall said, "Hey, throw some of that stuff in." No.
Speaker A
Right. And and it really took off. And then, you know, I mean, that was making it in bulk in 2 and 1/2 gallon containers. And it became so popular that we wanted to start making it in pints. And the problem was that the the
Speaker A
little chocolate chip cookie dough balls, I mean, people were rolling them by hand. Yeah. You know, I mean, that's a lot of balls to roll.
Speaker A
Yeah. And and they would they they're really sticky and they would get stuck to all the machinery and crap. And uh then we started coating them in uh corn starch, I think. And uh now they're made by this this great company in Vermont
Speaker A
that employs people who speak like five or 10 different languages. I mean, they're all uh immigrants. And what they do is that they freeze them as soon as they're made into they're extruded into these little pellets. I'm blown. I can't
Speaker A
get over this. It says that uh it was in um 1991 Benji began selling pints of the flavor which quickly became popular popular with consumers. 1992 chocolate cookie dough accounted for 20% of the company's total ice cream sales.
Speaker A
Wow. Wow. That's 20%. Well, today the biggest selling flavor is half baked, which is half chocolate chip cookie dough and half chocolate fudge brownie.
Speaker A
Yeah. No, I I love that. That's my Ben & Jerry's flavor. That's my top favorite.
Speaker A
I love it. Wait, someone said ask him about grape flavor. There's You guys have No, we don't do grape.
Speaker A
Yeah, that's crazy. We We had grape nut ice cream for a while. Grape nut cereals.
Speaker A
Have you ever had Turkish ice cream? Turkish. Oh, is that that stuff that's like really stretchy?
Speaker A
Yeah. Uh I think Yeah, I think I It's got uh cuz I asked my cousin how it's made because it's like what makes it so chewy cuz it's like kind of chewy.
Speaker A
Mashmos. It's from the area called Madash in Turkey. And uh he said that they use where is it? They use sah, which I don't know what it is. I don't know what sahib is in English. Let me just see. Um sah p
Speaker A
p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p powder. I guess maybe it's the same
Speaker A
thing. Yeah. Is a warm milky drink popular in the Middle East and Turkey. Flour made from the tubers of the orchid genus orcus. That's That's what That's what makes it like Cuz I I initially thought it was like u mastic. Like I
Speaker A
thought it was like mastic gum that they put in it, but it turns out it's not.
Speaker A
Uhhuh. That's what That's what makes it um chewy. Anyway, if you guys if you want to if you guys want to brooach into the Turkish ice cream territory, what is this? Show Ben your favorite Ben & Jerry's flavor. Oh, the American
Speaker A
dream. Yeah, American dream. There was some concern that, you know, cuz they're firing the guy, is it still going to survive? And I believe it will.
Speaker A
Oh, okay. So, how does that work? How does the process of like getting a Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor work? Do you do you are you still hands-on in that? Do you are you like I'm not personally hands-on in it. the
Speaker A
first ever. Let's say you make a call, you're like, "There's a political commentator who isn't fired, who still has a who still has just saying like a young guy, New Vision?" No, I'm kidding. I'm sure.
Speaker A
Do people ask you that all the time or they're like, "Everybody wants ice cream.
Speaker A
Everybody wants ice cream flavor." I mean, we came out with Cherry Garcia and then every band got in touch with us. We want to We want our ice cream flavor.
Speaker A
Yeah. What's the craziest flavor that someone has suggested if you don't mind me asking?
Speaker A
Crazy crazy flavor. Nothing. Well, you know, they keep on suggesting these savory flavors. Oh, that's the new thing that they want.
Speaker A
Why would anybody want savory? I I don't get it. I I just If you want savory, use wheat things.
Speaker A
You know, put put a wheat in underneath the ice cream. Exactly. Yeah. What about uh pistachio? Do you guys have a pistachio flavor? We do have a pistachio flavor and you know there aren't that many ice creams that have a
Speaker A
pistachio flavor anymore. And yeah, which is interesting cuz like that's huge in Turkey, but then again, you know, there's a lot of pistachio in Turkey, right? Right.
Speaker A
Um what? Yeah, we have a pistachio flavor and uh what is some other flavor that Oh. Oh, we have chunky monkey.
Speaker A
Banana flavor. Yeah. And I can't find another banana ice cream. I think I mean banana ice creams, they used to be yellow.
Speaker A
Yeah. But or or this is really OG. I feel like you don't they don't do that anymore. Tutti Frutti.
Speaker A
Yeah, that is very OG. I was not like a big fan of it. I've never It's not either.
Speaker A
I don't I don't know why. I've always felt like like fruit flavored ice cream.
Speaker A
It's a bad take. I know, but it's just not for me. I want Well, I mean, during my day at Ben & Jerry's, we found that we were not able to sell any fruit flavored ice cream unless we added chocolate to it.
Speaker A
Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, I mean, I guess like strawberry cheesecake is the only one that I make an exception for because it's a cheesecake, right?
Speaker A
You know, right? Well, someone said rum and raisin. I don't like rumin raisin, but again, that's just me as my own personal preference.
Speaker A
It's an oldtime flavor. Yeah, we we had rum raisin for a while. Yeah. It's interesting though, like I guess the palace change over time.
Speaker A
Yeah. You know, chubby hobby was kind of one of the first sweet and salty things.
Speaker A
And then there then there's been this real there was a real sweet and salty craze.
Speaker A
Yeah. I mean, there's a there's a a company called Salt and Straw. Um that does specifically that where it's like everything that they do is like very salty, very rich.
Speaker A
That's probably why a lot of people are asking you to do more savory stuff, honestly. Yeah. They got like some of them are just straight up salty. Like they have a they have like a goat cheese one where it's like just, you know,
Speaker A
salty. It's not for everybody. Okay. Out there idea. I'm going to I'm going to throw some ice cream flavor ideas at you.
Speaker A
Yeah. And see if you already have it cuz Benji has a lot of flavors. I don't know all the flavors. Okay. Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
Speaker A
Cinnamon Toast Crunch. It's like it's almost like a cookies and cream, but instead of the cookie base, instead of the Oreo cookie base, the base is cinnamon toast crunch cereal bits.
Speaker A
You know, I I think it could I think it could work. That's free ball for you. I'm giving that to you for free. It's all good. You can take that home with you. It's fine.
Speaker A
Okay. Baklava. Baklava. The company has tried and there were two flavors that we came out with at the same time. It was baklava and uh canoli. And I was saying that baklava was going to sell better than canoli,
Speaker A
but I was wrong. Yeah. Well, baklavas seems too oriental for for Americans. I think still it might it might have a resurgence now that now that like Dubai chocolate I don't know if you know what that is, but
Speaker A
Dubai chocolate is like popping off right now. Uh it's a Tik Tok trend, but it's basically uh do you know what KFA is? It's a Turkish uh it's like a Middle Eastern dessert. It's like filow dough pieces, I think. It's almost like It
Speaker A
looks like thick pieces of hair, strands of hair. Kind of hairy. Yeah. And they douse that with like some kind of pistachio chocolate and then they put that inside of uh they put that inside of a chocolate and that's how they make
Speaker A
Dubai chocolate. Uh that's pretty good. Yeah. It's not like coconut chat. Uh it's not it's not it doesn't feel it doesn't have the same mouth feels like coconut at all. It feels like it's closer to like a noodle like a crispy
Speaker A
pastry than uh than coconut. I don't like this personally, but uh have you guys ever tried a rose uh flavoring?
Speaker A
Yes. Yes, we have tried rose. I don't really like it, but I uh I I kind of liked it. It was It was kind of subtle and uh I think we added some pistachios to it. I'm usually not
Speaker A
kind of a subtle guy, but uh yeah, worked for me. Okay. What is your favorite flavor that went away? You have one where you're like, I really like this. I banged for this and people just didn't people just
Speaker A
didn't get the vision at the time. Well, the original one was Mocha Walnut. Uh, you know, I I used to be the delivery guy. I would be delivering it.
Speaker A
Uhhuh. You should be eating while you're delivering. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, we got complaint letters. Half of them said there's too much coffee in the mocha.
Speaker A
Half of them said there's too much chocolate in the mocha. Uhhuh. So, you know, it was kind of a subtle, you know, there's nothing the walnuts and the mocha. It's kind of a subtle thing. And I Yeah. You know, you
Speaker A
had to have a, you know, a hankering for that kind of thing. Okay. And then there was coffee almond fudge, which I thought was a great flavor, no longer around, and coconut almond.
Speaker A
So, you're you're a fan of uh the nuts in the ice cream. Yeah. Well, you know, you might have heard that I don't have that much of a sense of taste.
Speaker A
Oh, I have not heard that. It it it might have been considered uh you know, a problem for an ice cream man, but uh we turned it into what? An advantage. So, you know, when you don't have much of a sense of taste,
Speaker A
you go for texture. Correct. That's exactly it. No, texture is very important, right? I I I agree. I think mouth feel is a is a mouth. I love it.
Speaker A
Very important aspect. You know, not that many people, you know, use that word aside from myself.
Speaker A
Yeah. No, I I love using that word. Mouth feel. It's a subcategory of the sense of touch.
Speaker A
My chatter's made. Churn out the vote. Socialist woke bet is Yeah. I mean, I'm just, you know, no pressure. No pressure. I mean, Oh, yeah. as far as like uh chicken as dessert tokus which means chicken breast is a Turkish chicken dessert. It's made
Speaker A
with literally chicken breast. It's it's got a crazy mouth feel and it's not even remotely savory at all. It's really interesting.
Speaker A
But yeah, that's that's another one. There was one more thing I wanted to ask you as far as flavors goes. So, I gave you uh Cinnamon Toast Crunch ice cream.
Speaker A
What else? What else could there be? Chat, do you have any that I haven't thought about? Oh. Uh, bacon and maple.
Speaker A
That could work. I I could I could definitely understand that. Yeah, that was another one. Oh, people are saying Vegomite.
Speaker A
Oh, no. Yeah. No. No. Okay. So, you don't like the protein ice cream? No.
Speaker A
You're not in favor of it? No. Ice cream should be ice cream. Okay. What do you think about like the the Greek yogurt uh shops that they have now where it's like you can just like put a bunch of stuff on it? What's your
Speaker A
What's your Have you You've been to one of these places, I assume, where you go to like a frozen yogurt shop and they have all these toppings that you put and they weigh it.
Speaker A
Yeah, I like it. The problem is that the cups are too damn big and when you go to check out it's like 20 bucks.
Speaker A
Yeah. No, that's how they get you. Yeah. So, what's a what's a no no for you in terms of toppings? Let's say you're gummy bears. I think this gummy [ __ ] is really ridiculous.
Speaker A
Yes. That's why I asked you cuz someone was suggesting gummy bears. No, gummy bears. I love gummy bears. Not on ice cream. They get cold and they get hard and it changes like the the mouth feel of it all. It's not gummy anymore.
Speaker A
Yeah. It's not good on ice cream. A juju be. You remember juju be? No.
Speaker A
These were like super hard gummy things. They were like stale gummy things. Yeah. No, I don't I don't like that. But I do like, as I've said before, the crumbled cookie toppings I love. Yeah.
Speaker A
Which another another good ice cream flavor could be cookie butter. Cookie which I don't even know if you guys have already butter.
Speaker A
You've never had cookie butter? No. Oh, it's like lotus biscoffs. Like it's like little biscuits. They have a specific taste.
Speaker A
Yeah. So So you you you take and they turn that into like and you make it into that taste.
Speaker A
They basically turn that into like uh they take that cookie and they turn it into like spreadable Uhhuh. like a spreadable thing basically.
Speaker A
And oh, it's it's incredible. What? And you like spread it on bread? Yeah, you can spread it on bread or crackers. I just eat it straight off the straight. Yeah. Ask him about red velvet.
Speaker A
You know, I don't believe in red velvet. Well, I mean, it's not it's nothing.
Speaker A
It's just food coloring. It's just red, right? Yeah. I I agree. Okay, we're we're locked in on this. So, yeah, red velvet believers, you're wrong. It's true. I I don't know what it is. I still think it's different. In my mind, it tastes
Speaker A
different, but I know it's not different, if that makes sense. Well, you know, especially for a guy who doesn't have a sense of taste, it's really not.
Speaker A
Okay, someone's asking you earlier tea flavored ice cream. Too subtle. I mean, well, you know, again, a guy who doesn't have a sense of taste, I can't tell the difference between all these different teas.
Speaker A
Yeah, you just got to put you got to put some sprinkle some uh nuts in there.
Speaker A
Yeah. Tea and nuts. Okay. Well, Ben, thank you so much for coming on. It has been a pleasure. Amazing. Thank you. Beautiful.
Speaker A
You're awesome.
Topics:Ben CohenBen & Jerry'sice creambusiness originsocial missionprogressive activismBernie Sandersentrepreneurshipice cream historyHasanAbi interview
