Marlon James Builds His Own Damn Universe

Summary

The New Yorker Radio Hour

Episode: Marlon James Builds His Own Damn Universe

Date: February 5, 2019
Host: David Remnick
Notable Guest: Marlon James (interview with Gia Tolentino); also includes a business segment with Ron Shaikh (former CEO of Panera Bread) and Sheila Kolhatkar

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Overview

This episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour is split into two distinctive halves. The first is an insightful, freewheeling conversation with novelist Marlon James and Gia Tolentino about James' new African fantasy trilogy, his creative inspirations, and his personal journey as a genre lover and literary innovator. The second segment investigates the impact of activist investors on American companies, focusing on Ron Shaikh’s experience as Panera’s CEO.

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Segment 1: Marlon James Builds His Own Damn Universe (00:09–14:31)

Main Themes

• Creation and significance of James' "Dark Star Trilogy" (specifically, the novel Black Leopard, Red Wolf)
• The need for inclusivity and new perspectives in the fantasy genre
• Literary and pop culture influences on James’ writing
• Structural innovation in epic storytelling

Key Discussion Points

The Origins of a New Fantasy Universe

• James’ desire to write an “African Game of Thrones” grew out of disappointment with the lack of diversity and inclusion in fantasy media:

  • Quote: "I just got tired of that debate, tired of the question about inclusion and then the backlash against asking for inclusion. I was like, you know what? I'll just build my own damn universe." — Marlon James (03:25)

• His new approach is rooted in African folktales, epic storytelling traditions (e.g., Sundiata, Askia Mohammed), and a different metaphysical outlook than traditional Eurocentric fantasy.

Reimagining Genre Conventions

• Tolentino and James discuss how fantasy and sci-fi have often perpetuated colonialist, Western perspectives:

  • Quote: "People can imagine a whole imaginary world but not imagine black people in it." — Gia Tolentino (03:19)

  • James notes that African and diasporic storytelling often doesn’t separate the real and surreal:

    Quote: "This sort of absence of the surreal and the supernatural being a mark of realism, whatever that might mean, has always seemed ludicrous to me." — Marlon James (05:04)

Literary Influences & Magical Realism

• James' perspective on authors like Toni Morrison and Gabriel García Márquez:

  • Morrison’s Beloved and Song of Solomon exemplify how Black narratives use magical elements to express reality.

  • Márquez’s “magical realism” simply felt like realism to James:

    Quote: "It wasn't magical to me. In fact, it legitimized the crazy thoughts in my head." — Marlon James (05:13)

Building Unpredictable, Complex Characters

• Main character Tracker (narrator): a bounty hunter with a magically gifted nose.
• James’ favorite characters to write (excluding Tracker):

  • Ogo, the motormouth giant who subverts genre tropes.

  • Saughland, the 315-year-old “moon witch” whose complexity has her narrate the next novel.

    Quote: "I like writing characters who I have to have a very complicated relationship with." — Marlon James (08:01)

Structural Innovations in Storytelling

• Trilogy structured in a “Rashomon-esque” fashion: three books, each with a different narrator recounting overlapping quest stories—a literary approach inspired by the TV series The Affair.

  Quote: "It's three people telling different versions of the same quest." — Interviewer/Gia Tolentino (08:08)

Literary Canons and Rebellion

• James’ favorite Pride and Prejudice character: Mrs. Bennet, because she’s keenly aware of her daughters’ social realities.

• Least favorite novel in the canon: Wuthering Heights; he critiques it for lack of true psychology and depth:

  Quote: "I keep trying. I tried last year... Summer was the third time I tried. I just don't think it's this sort of deeply psychological novel that people think..." — Marlon James (11:07)

Pop Culture, Comics, and Music

• Early love for Batman, but the X-Men became central, especially Storm and Mystique, who complicated the line between heroes and villains.

• Music as writing inspiration: Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, Stereolab’s Dots and Loops—James writes to rhythm.

• If Tracker existed today, he’d listen to Vince Staples for his dryness, sarcasm, and social commentary.

  Quote: "Vince Staples is wry and sarcastic... he would totally... Hell, he would be Vince Staples." — Marlon James (14:03)

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• “People can imagine a whole imaginary world but not imagine black people in it.” (03:19)
• “I'll just build my own damn universe.” — Marlon James (03:43)
• On magical realism:
  “It wasn't magical to me. In fact, it legitimized the crazy thoughts in my head.” (05:13)
• On favorite Pride and Prejudice character:
  “I love Mrs. Bennet... she’s the only person realizing I need to get these women married because these women are running out of time.” (10:49)
• On Wuthering Heights:
  “If one of those three girls wrote a novel, it would be Wuthering Heights.” (11:32)
• On Storm from X-Men:
  “I always envied somebody so really radically defending herself...” (12:09)
• On writing to music:
  “Probably Miles Davis, Bitch's Brew, Stereolab’s Dots and Loops. It gets me in a rhythm and I think I write to rhythm and I think I write to beat.” (13:25)

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[14:31–14:57]

Marlon James shifts to a playful segment about his phobias and music superstitions (originating from his appearance on another podcast, 10 Things That Scare Me), such as not listening to heavy metal while flying to avoid bad luck.

“I'm not religious anymore, but I can't listen to heavy metal on flights... So no White Zombie, no Black Sabbath, no Electric wizard, just in case God gets pissed.” — Marlon James (15:17)

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Segment 2: The Real Cost of Corporate “Activism” (16:31–27:44)

Main Themes

• Impact of activist investors on American companies
• Tensions between short-term shareholder value and long-term company health and innovation

Key Discussion Points

Who Are Activist Investors?

• Not “socially responsible do-gooders,” but hedge fund managers pushing public companies for fast stock gains, often through cost-cutting and restructuring.
• Quote: "By definition, activist investing is a little bit adversarial and a little uncomfortable." — Sheila Kolhatkar (16:56)

The Panera Bread Story

• Ron Shaikh recounts activist investment firms pushing Panera to make short-term decisions, such as hiking prices—often at the cost of customer loyalty and long-term viability.

• He describes activists’ focus on rapid shareholder returns as fundamentally at odds with building sustainable businesses.

  Quote: “It's always easy in the short term to squeeze, but the question is, what's its price, medium and long term?” — Ron Shaikh (19:02)

Public Markets, Short-Termism, and Societal Costs

• In the past, shareholders held stocks for years—now, for months; this has “changed the way in which our companies are operating.”
• Shaikh ultimately chose to take Panera private to preserve its long-term vision and decision-making ability.
• He links the same pressures to Whole Foods’ sale to Amazon, arguing the latter’s private ownership means it can make necessary long-term transformations.

Solutions and Stakes

• Shaikh suggests reforms: rewarding long-term shareholders, adjusting executive compensation to incentivize long-term thinking.

• The shift to short-termism, he argues, widens inequality and stifles innovation, harming workers and the broader U.S. economy.

  Quote: “If you're in Michigan and you're in a factory and that factory is owned by a company that was just taken over by activist investors and that company makes a decision to cut jobs, who do you think ends up being at the loss?” — Ron Shaikh (25:48)

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Notable Quotes and Moments

• On why public markets are shifting:
  “What used to be the prevailing mantra—we had a responsibility to our communities and a responsibility to our guests as well as our shareholders. We've increasingly moved to a world that says the only thing that matters is whether I can pop that stock next week.” — Ron Shaikh (20:22)
• On the cost of short-term thinking:
  “We're not getting the innovation. We're also frankly doing damage across the country. And there’s an ultimate implication to that.” — Ron Shaikh (25:48)
• On the need for systemic reform:
  “The time to worry about a heart attack is not in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.” — Ron Shaikh (25:39)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:09–14:31 — Marlon James and Gia Tolentino on fantasy, genre, and character building
• 14:31–16:31 — Marlon James' appearance on “10 Things That Scare Me”
• 16:31–27:44 — Sheila Kolhatkar and Ron Shaikh on activist investors and the future of American business

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Summary Takeaways

For Literary & Culture Fans:

• Marlon James is reinventing epic fantasy, centering African tradition and disrupting genre conventions.
• The episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in representation, the power of narrative, and how pop culture shapes literary creativity.

For Business & Economics Listeners:

• The second half delivers accessible, vivid explanations for why so many American workers and communities suffer even when companies appear successful, shining a spotlight on investor-driven short-termism as a root cause.

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This episode showcases the importance of hard-won creative independence, whether in epic fiction or in corporate leadership—offering both inspiration and a sober look at the systems that shape contemporary culture and business.

Transcript

[Interviewer]

From one World Trade center in Manhattan.

[Sheila Kolhatkar]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.

[David Remnick]

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. A Brief History of Seven Killings is a work of fiction, but it also follows the contours of history. It includes an assassination attempt against Bob marley in the 70s. It includes the CIA and Jamaican politics and South American drug cartels, the crack epidemic in the 80s and the. And a lot more. It's a sprawling, ambitious, eventful book. And in 2015, it won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for its author, Marlon James. That was the first time that a Jamaican writer had ever won the award. And shortly after he won the prize, James told an interviewer that his next project was going to be epic. Literally. He was going to write a three volume fantasy epic that he described as an African Game of Thrones. Over the last few years, he's delved into African folktales and history. He's revisited the canonical fantasy novels of Tolkien, and as always, he's been absorbed in pop culture and music of all kinds. Marlon James calls his series the Dark Star Trilogy. The first book has just been published and it's called Black Red Wolf.

[Marlon James]

Leopard got to me before I got to the river. Still on four paws, a dead antelope in his mouth. That night, he watched in disgust as I cooked my portion. He had changed back into a man and was on two legs, but eating the antelope leg raw, ripping away the skin with his teeth, sinking into flesh and licking the blood off his lips. I wanted to enjoy flesh the way he enjoyed flesh. My burned and black leg disgusted me as well. He gave me a look that said he could never understand why any animal in these lands would. Would eat prey by burning it first.

[David Remnick]

A profile of Marlon James just ran in the New Yorker, and it was written by Gia Tolentino. Here's Gia with Marlon James.

[Interviewer]

This entry into fantasy and the book that resulted, it originated in a lot of places. You know, you were telling me you researched 14th century Malian history and you know, and you are a lifetime lover of genre of all sorts, but especially fantasy. But one of the places it came from is you got into an argument about the hobbit movie in 2012. Can you describe that argument?

[Marlon James]

It wasn't even the movie. It was. It was when he announced the cast. 13 dwarves and a halfling. Strange traveling companions, Gandalf. These are the descendants of the House of Durin. And I'm like, you know, this is one really white Cast and the friends I was with, one of the friends mentioned, well, you know, it's British. It's based on British mythology and Celtic mythology and so on. I think he was trying to find a way of just telling me that Lord of the Rings is white.

[Interviewer]

To take his head.

[Marlon James]

And I said, you know, if we went to the Shire and saw an Asian hobbit, nobody would have cared.

[Interviewer]

Right. It's this thing where people can imagine a whole imaginary world but not imagine black people in it. Right.

[Marlon James]

Which is not a reflection of the novel, of course, which I adore and take from. But I just got tired of that debate, tired of the question about inclusion and then the backlash against asking for inclusion. I was like, you know what? I. I'll just build my own damn universe.

[Interviewer]

Right, well, so the genre that you're writing in has often been defined by this perspective that is kind of explicitly colonialist. And sci fi is like, it's sort of a proto Western with people striding to find new worlds and conquer them. Right. And then fantasy is like pale heroes on horseback protecting the countryside from the orcs. Right. But then at the same time, there's this counter tradition of black sci fi or black fantasy, and lately fantasy that is like your book, rooted in African diasporic traditions.

[Marlon James]

In some ways, it's a wider list when you're thinking about African literature, largely because those distinctions wouldn't have happened.

[Interviewer]

Right. The supernatural works completely different in African folk tradition. Yeah. I was thinking it's like, arguably you love. I know you love Toni Morrison. Arguably, Beloved even has a foot in almost like horror fantasy.

[Marlon James]

Yeah, it is, it is. It has a foot in gothic. It has a foot in the. The darker side of magical realism. You know, Beloved and Song of Solomon both recognize that if we're gonna tell stories about black and brown people and so on, then our conventions of reality are different. You know, at the end of Song of Solomon, you are supposed to believe that we can fly.

[Interviewer]

And you've also talked about Marquez. The first time you read Marques, you were like, this is magical realism. But it's also. Yeah, it wasn't reality.

[Marlon James]

It wasn't magical to me.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Marlon James]

It wasn't magical to me. In fact, it legitimized the crazy thoughts in my head.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Marlon James]

And Marquez also said it, if you live in the Caribbean, and I always love that he called himself a Caribbean writer. You know, if you live in the Caribbean, you know that reality is wilder than the craziest fiction. So I was reading quite a bit of contemporary and not so contemporary African fiction and sci fi and fantasy. But what I ended up reading was a lot of the ancient African epics. So the epic of Sundiata, the Lion of Mali, the epic of Askia Mohammed, which has the floating city. Go. There's an epic about a cannibal witch who is outsmarted only by her own daughter. And then she dies of old age, which I thought was just badass. This sort of absence of the surreal and the supernatural being a mark of realism, whatever that might mean, has always seemed ludicrous to me. The most realistic novel I wrote was Brief History of Seven Killings. And it still opens me with a narration from a ghost.

[Interviewer]

Right. So when people say, what's your new book about? What do you say?

[Marlon James]

You know, I just say it's me trying to write a kind of African epic story I always wanted to read.

[Interviewer]

Right. And so the book is, you know, mostly it's through. The narrator is this guy tracker, basically sort of a career bounty hunter with this magically gifted nose for sniffing people out. But he, you know, he joins this motley crew of people that are hunting for the boy. My personal favorite among them is the wise buffalo who joins upweight. The crew is very motley, though, the buffalo. I think one of the reasons that I liked him is that he was consistently. He's not predictable, but you do trust him and, you know, he's good. It's not quite the same for all of the other seekers. No. And I was wondering who was your favorite character to write and if you could talk a little like of the search party. And you can't pick the narrator.

[Marlon James]

Okay. I wouldn't have picked him anyway. It would be a toss up between the Ogo, the giant. Again, the giant is such a stereotype of fantasy. And they're always sort of monosyllabic. Either the gentle giant or the violent grunting giant. And he's just a motor mouth who just won't show up. And he was so much fun to write. And Saughland was also interesting to write because it's.

[Interviewer]

Can you describe her a little bit?

[Marlon James]

Yeah. You know, some people have called her the moon witch. She's 315 years old, and she's the only one in the quest who has a specific agenda for finding this boy. And because of that, she makes some really, really drastic decisions. I like writing characters who I have to have a very complicated relationship with.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Marlon James]

And hers was certainly the most complicated. She also is telling the next book. So she's a narrator in the next book. So it's Gonna be interesting.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I can't wait. I love your female characters. They're all so. They're all so tricky and so. Yeah, right. So the next book will be narrated by Saughalon, and then the next one by an undisclosed third narrator. And so the structure of this trilogy is notably different. It's sort of Rashomon esque. It's three people telling different versions of the same quest. And it's also like the Showtime series the Affair. And that was, in a way, your inspiration.

[Marlon James]

When I look back up, I can't.

[Ron Shaikh]

Tell you why it happened.

[Marlon James]

Ms. Bailey, why don't you tell me how it began?

[Sheila Kolhatkar]

It was so long ago. Who remembers?

[Marlon James]

It was a discussion about it. You know, I was talking to Melina Matsukas at the time, director of Insecure. And at the time, I'd been researching this novel for two years and I still couldn't figure out how to tell the story. And she was talking about their. And how it's different perspectives on the same story and the stories don't add up. And she was saying, you know, this is a great idea for a TV show. And I'm like, forget the TV show. This is a great idea for a novel.

[Interviewer]

For my novel. Okay. Best affair in literature.

[Marlon James]

Best affair in literature is very easy for me. Actually, it's the affair in the End of the Affair. Graham Greene novel, which I also think is the best novel about an affair. And the film is actually pretty good.

[Interviewer]

I've never seen it.

[Marlon James]

Julianne Moore, who should have won the best actress Oscar. Fred. It's one of those. One of those how did Oscars miss it? Kind of films. The End of the Affair highly recommend it.

[Interviewer]

So I was on an Edith Wharton kick while we were hanging out. And it was funny. We ended up talking about a lot of novels in the canon of literary fiction. And you had some unexpected affinities, which I sort of. Tell me who your favorite Pride and Prejudice character is and why.

[Marlon James]

Favorite Pride and Prejudice character? Damn. I. You know what? Of course I love the hero. I love Elizabeth, and I love Darcy. Even before Darcy became likable. I really like the people everybody don't like.

[Ron Shaikh]

Everybody else don't like.

[Marlon James]

I really love Mrs. Bennet. The thing I like about Austen is that even her unsavory characters can sometimes be the only people who know what time it is. And Mrs. Bennet is one of the few people in that novel who knows what time it is. I mean, fine, she's shrill, so sexist and so on, but no, people gotta eat.

[Interviewer]

You know.

[Marlon James]

Yeah. But she's the only person realizing I need to get these women married because these women are running out of time.

[Interviewer]

Right, right.

[Marlon James]

And I love her.

[Interviewer]

Is there. You don't have to answer this, but okay. What is, what's your least favorite, like canon novel?

[Marlon James]

Oh, God. Wuthering Heights.

[Interviewer]

I hate Wuthering Heights.

[Ron Shaikh]

I keep trying.

[Marlon James]

I keep trying. I tried last year. Summer was the third time I tried. I just don't think it's this sort of deeply psychological novel that people think, for one thing. I just don't think Emily Bronte had the psychology. It's like if you read Salman Rashid's novel Shame. The sisters Chunny, Money and Bunny, who grew up in isolation and think they understand the world. If one of those three girls wrote a novel, it would be Wuthering Heights.

[Interviewer]

Let me. Let's go back to your childhood, your childhood influences. You told me that you spent your childhood in a middle class suburb of Kingston, watching Charlie's Angels, reading comic books, et cetera. What was your earliest comic book fascination?

[Marlon James]

Earliest comic book fascination would have been Batman.

[Interviewer]

But then later X Men became your thing, right?

[Marlon James]

Yeah, huge, huge touchstone, the whole sort of identifying, you know, I mean, I was a nerd as an outcast. They were outcasts. It really struck a chord with me.

[Interviewer]

Was there any X Men in particular that you.

[Marlon James]

I really love Storm. Yeah, Storm because she was black and African, but I actually liked when she went suddenly punk rock in the 80s. Cause I always wanted a mohawk. And I always envied somebody so really radically defending herself. I like some of the villains too. I mean, like Mystique. Mystique had secrets. And Mystique was complicated. It was very different from the type of villains who just say curses found out again or something, or people talking about these meddling kids. X Men sometimes would win the battle, but Mystique won the ideological war. It's like, don't kid yourself. You went against our kind to defend people who will kill you tomorrow.

[Interviewer]

She's right.

[Marlon James]

You know, she and a lot of the villains left a really, really sort of complicated aftertaste in my mouth.

[Interviewer]

So you, like me, have music on constantly and you always have it on really loud. And you have talked about when you're writing. You will note on your manuscript pages what you were listening to as you wrote. And I was wondering, what was the album you listened to most while writing the new book?

[Marlon James]

Most while writing the new book. Probably Miles Davis. Bitch's can's stereo Labs, Dots and Loops. It gets me in a rhythm And I think I write to rhythm and I think I write to beat.

[Interviewer]

Well, another question. So Tracker, your narrator is this sullen, slippery kind of tough guy who has kind of lost faith in this enchanted world around him. If he were a person alive right now, what do you think he would listen to?

[Marlon James]

You know, he'd be listening to. He'd be listening to Vince Staples. Cause Vince Staples is wry and sarcastic. Vince Staples is the guy who did that whole GoFundMe said, okay, you want to get me out of the world, pay me the leave. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you would totally. Hell, you would be Vince Staples. Bel Air school wasn't no fun couldn't bring my gun no change gon come like Obama say But they shooting every day around my mom and him Wait.

[Interviewer]

So he put thank you for coming in and talking to me.

[Marlon James]

You need me to say something too? Like, thanks for having me.

[David Remnick]

Marlon James talking with the New Yorker's Gia Tolentino. And James also appears on WNYC's podcast 10 Things that Scare Me, which is almost exactly what it sounds like.

[Marlon James]

Number four, turbulence. It's always hilarious when you're on planes with Jamaicans, because usually when we go through turbulence, somebody screams for a moment of prayer, like, dear Jesus, please intervene in our situation. This is the thing I like to say. I'm not religious anymore, but I can't listen to heavy metal on flights. I remember the last time the flight was fine. I put on White Zombie and the flight turned into chaos. I'm like, you know what? God is telling me something. So no White Zombie, no Black Sabbath, no Electric wizard, just in case God gets pissed.

[David Remnick]

10 things that scare Me is a new podcast from WNYC Studios. You're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. You know, you read these stories, or maybe you've been in this situation yourself, stories about a company that's laying off workers even though it's successful and the CEO gets a huge bonus. Or there's a factory that closes while the product it makes seems to be profitable. And you read that, and it seems like something doesn't quite add up. Our explainer in chief on the corporate world is Sheela Kolhatkar, a staff writer who covers business for the New Yorker. And Sheila says that those stories about cost cutting often have to do with what's called activist investors.

[Sheila Kolhatkar]

When you talk to CEOs now and senior executives at companies, everyone is worrying about activists. They are all worried about being targeted by an activist investor.

[David Remnick]

Now, if this isn't your world, let's do a little clarification. When Sheila says activists investors, she's not talking about some kind of socially responsible do gooder. An activist investor is something else entirely.

[Sheila Kolhatkar]

They're usually investors at hedge funds who buy up shares in a publicly traded company and then go to that company and try and influence the people running the company to make changes so that the stock price goes up. By definition, activist investing is a little bit adversarial and a little uncomfortable. And some activist investors who are very famous, really terrifying corporate America, people are literally shaking when they get a call from that particular fund. But it's basically the talk of corporate America.

[David Remnick]

So the activist investors often pit themselves against the CEOs. But this is more than just a squabble among the 1%. These fights over the management of public companies have consequences for all of American business, for our products and our jobs. Here's Sheila Kolhatkar.

[Sheila Kolhatkar]

One person who really helped me understand all of this from the perspective of a CEO is Ron Shaikh, the founder and former CEO of Panera Bread, the fast casual restaurant chain. He was really the visionary behind many of the big ideas that made Panera successful.

[Ron Shaikh]

I had the best performance of any restaurant stock over the last 20 years of public company, 26% annual appreciation, 44 times the S&P 500 best performance in the restaurant industry.

[Sheila Kolhatkar]

Ron told me that twice during his time running Panera. Activist investors came in and tried to get him to change the way he was running the company. So I wanted to start by asking you to take us back in time. It's 2007, and you had grown Panera over 20 to 30 years into one of the most successful restaurant companies in the country. And an activist investment firm called Shamrock Activist Value Fund bought a stake in your company, and they wanted you to make some changes to the business. What did they want you to change?

[Ron Shaikh]

They wanted us to increase our prices more quickly. They thought we could drive more profitability, essentially by putting more pressure on our customers.

[Sheila Kolhatkar]

And what did you think about that idea?

[Ron Shaikh]

I thought the idea was shortsighted. I thought it's always easy in the short term to squeeze, but the question is, what's its price, medium and long term? And what time frames are you talking about?

[Sheila Kolhatkar]

And did Shamrock have any other ideas for things that you could do?

[Ron Shaikh]

Well, I basically met with them. It's usually the way the game goes. And the lead partner of Shamrock put his arm around me and said, listen, just take the advice of our young Associate, we'll help you make more money more quickly.

[Marlon James]

We'll.

[Ron Shaikh]

Wouldn't that be wonderful for all of us? And by the way, if you don't take my advice, we're going to make you.

[Sheila Kolhatkar]

So the young associate thought that he or she had some good ideas about how to run your company that maybe you hadn't thought about yourself.

[Ron Shaikh]

Well, straight up, it doesn't take all that much to raise prices. But if you want to understand the thesis of many of these activists, the prevailing mantra has been shareholder value creation. Years ago, the average shareholder held their share of a company on average for eight years. More recently, the average shareholder rents that stock for eight months. They're really renting it for its economic impact. And the result is we've changed the way in which our companies are operating. You increasingly have our CEOs and our boards making short term decisions, trying to assuage their shareholders. And in a world in which what used to be the prevailing mantra, we had a responsibility to our communities and a responsibility to our guests as well as our shareholders. We've increasingly moved to a world that says the only thing that matters is whether I can pop that stock next week. And boy, I'll tell you, that's bad for our companies, that's bad for our economy, and it's ultimately bad for our country.

[Sheila Kolhatkar]

So you spent your career building Panera. You started out as the manager of one bakery in Boston. Can you tell me a bit about the cookie jar?

[Ron Shaikh]

Sure. I always wanted to create the company I wanted to work in. I opened a single Little store in 400 square feet in downtown Boston. I then merged that in with a company called Au Bon Pen, which was going through its own series of problems. I then ran that company over the course of 36 years, ultimately selling it as Panera. We had changed its name along the way, but I sold it in a $7.8 billion transaction. The largest US restaurant deal ever done.

[Sheila Kolhatkar]

Can you give me some examples of long term decisions you made that allowed you to build Panera into your vision for serving this market?

[Ron Shaikh]

Well, sure. In 1993, we, Au Bon Penco Inc. Bought a 19 store chain called St. Louis Bread Company. We then took two years, 1994 and 1995, studying the marketplace. And in the early to mid-90s, in the food business, you could feel a significant niche of the marketplace that wanted to feel special in a world in which they weren't. And we began to imagine what kind of place would have real food, would have environments that engaged you, would have people that cared that became another niche called fast casual. And today that niche is a $50 billion niche of the fast food industry. It took us then three years, 96, 97 and 98 to make the changes that allowed us to rename the St. Louis Bread Company Panera. Quite frankly, our stock was flat for three years. And the truth is, if we were trying to do that in 2019, I doubt we ever could have gotten it done.

[Sheila Kolhatkar]

What do you think would have happened if you tried today to make all of those big business transformations you just described?

[Ron Shaikh]

That's exactly why I sold my company. Because the truth of the matter is Panera's greatest competitive advantage, its ability to make these long term transformative bets, was at great risk. And I ultimately made the decision that we were far better removing the company from the public markets and returning it to the private market. And that by doing so, Panera would have the capability to protect its long term competitive advantage. You may know I was on the board of Whole Foods. Whole Foods was one of the most successful retailers of the last 25 years.

[Sheila Kolhatkar]

I love Whole Foods.

[Ron Shaikh]

And yet, two to three years ago, the environment around Whole Foods was beginning to change. You had companies like Aldi and Lidl coming in from Europe like Trader Joe's. Whole Food needed to evolve. But within two quarters, activists showed up. We were told, hey, you either fix it in three months or we're going to basically call for John Mackey, our CEO's retirement. And the reality is that Whole Foods was forced into a position where, where selling to Amazon was the best scenario. What do you think Amazon is doing different with Whole Foods than Whole Food would have done on its own? Nothing. The only difference is the capital structure and the ability of Amazon to make long term decisions. You want to know what creates competitive advantage? It's the ability to make long term decisions. Which is why our public markets are under such huge pressure. And so many companies are running from the public markets as opposed to the public markets.

[Sheila Kolhatkar]

So basically, Whole Foods wouldn't have been given the time by its shareholders to make these changes that it is now able to make because it's under the safe umbrella of Jeff Bezos and Amazon.

[Ron Shaikh]

The point I'm trying to make is not simply that the activists are the problem, the activists are not the problem. In and of themselves. The activists are the byproduct of a pervasive sense of short termism that's informed our marketplaces. Why is that? It starts with our active money managers are incentivized on short term pressure. Add to that the liquidity in the market in the sense that if I there's no value in being in for the long term and you have a situation in which there's increasing pressure for short term results, activism arises from that condition.

[Sheila Kolhatkar]

So what are the stakes in this battle? It's not just about you and it wasn't just about Panera. What is sort of the larger fight that's taking place here when we live.

[Ron Shaikh]

In a world where you have very short term thinking. The result of it is the only kind of initiatives CEOs and boards will consider is short term initiatives. What does that mean? Cost cutting. We're not getting the innovation. We're also frankly doing damage across the country. And there's an ultimate implication to that. If you're in Michigan and you're in a factory and that factory is owned by a company that was just taken over by activist investors and that company makes a decision to cut jobs, who do you think ends up being at the loss? Guys like me. Gals like me have done phenomenally well since the Great Recession. That hasn't really happened for middle America. The benefits haven't been shared. And I think most people have a sense of the problem. They know this isn't fundamentally working for a better country. We want better decisions. We've got to fix this problem and there are remedies to do it. We can begin by looking at differential holding periods for shareholders. We want to reward those that have long term holding periods or at least give them different influence in the decision making. Secondly, we've got to look at compensation schemes. We want to reward long term performance. The time to worry about a heart attack is not in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. If you don't deal with these kinds of problems before they occur, you cannot fix it. And I don't care whether you're talking about our politics, I don't care about whether you're talking about our economy. We have become pervasively more short term and unless we call that out and unless we go to work to drive structural reforms to change that, this is not going to lead to a good place. We get it. We've got to solve it.

[David Remnick]

Ron Shaikh, the former CEO of Panera Bread and a restaurant investor, he spoke with the New Yorkers. Sheila Kolhatka Hour I'm David Remnick and that's our episode for today. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for more.

[Sheila Kolhatkar]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed.

[Interviewer]

By Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with.

[Sheila Kolhatkar]

Additional music by Alexis Quadrado. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Turina Endowment Fund.