Why Dolly Parton Is An Absolute ICON

Welcome to Navara Live. Coming up tonight, um Dolly Parton has died aged 80 and the tributes are just flooding in. I've never seen anything like this. Um especially on my social media account, people from all across the political spectrum. Um fans of all different kinds of music all just saying, you know, this one woman, she was brilliant. Um we're also um one step closer to a vaccine for cancer. Um and we take a deep dive into the manf funding Niger Farage. Um I'm Michael Walker. Um, I don't have a co-host in the studio with me today. Um, you probably know already. Amber Aaron Bastani, my normal Wednesday co-host, um, is off on paternity leave because he has just had a beautiful second daughter. Um, instead though, I am joined by an array of guests, each one more expert in their field than the last. Um, so we have some fascinating insights ahead. Um, before we begin, um, tickets for our next downstream IRL event go on sale tomorrow. Um, this time is at the Duke of York Picture House in Brighton where Ash Sar will be joined by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor to discuss their new book, End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World. Um, that's on Thursday the 1st of October. And tickets are available via the link in the description. Now, often on these, you know, with these downstream ones, you know, we're really supposed to sort of talk up how brilliant it's going to be, how interesting the conversations. It's got Naomi Klein, right? So, it's going to sell out. So probably uh you want to go and try book your ticket pretty soon. Uh let's go straight to that first story. Dolly Parton died um on Tuesday aged 80. Now we don't often cover the deaths of cultural figures. This is principally a show about politics but the universal outpouring um I've seen on social media over the past 24 hours means hers is a life um that I do think demands to be talked about. Um and what a life. Dolly Parton was born in 1946, the fourth of 12 children. Her farmer was a tenant farmer and the family grew up in a one room cabin. Um, many of her earliest hits like Coat of Many Colors were about the experience of growing up poor in the southern United States. Um, she would go on to write and record some of the classic country and pop songs of the 20th century, including Jolene, I will always love you and 9 to5. Um, in her seven decade career, Parton wrote over 3,000 songs, sold more than 100 million records, won 10 Grammys, um, and was inducted into the country songwriters and rock and roll halls of fame. Now, obviously, the best way to pay tribute to Dolly Parton, um, would be to play her music. Um, unfortunately, we don't have the rights. Um, so you can do that in your own time. I'm sure many of you have been doing that already, or if you've been on Twitter today, you'll just be seeing all of these, um, you know, songs people are sharing. And then also like amazing impromptu live performances we that she did. Um sorry. Um of course though like outside of the music Dolly Parton was also a larger than-l life character. She famously once said her iconic look had been inspired by a town where she grew up. So everyone had sort of talked about this woman dismissively and Dolly Parton says that's what I want to look like. She looks amazing. And while some people tried to mock Dolly Parton for her look, she was always clear she deserved to be taken seriously. Nobody can trick me. Nobody can fool me. I can sit in a in a room with the biggest businessmen in the world working on some of the big biggest business deals and I don't feel a bit inadequate. In fact, I always feel like I got a little something on most of them. >> Your first hit, country hit in 1967 was about a dumb country blonde. >> But that song was called Dumb Blonde. But that whole song was it says just because I'm blonde don't think I'm dumb. This dumb blonde ain't nobody's fool. At that time, I thought the song was clever. I thought it made a statement for me. And it's uh like I've always tried to say, I've I like to think I've got a brain beneath the wig and a heart beneath the boo. >> Now, one of Dolly Parton's most impressive legacies, um obviously aside from the music, um is her imagination library. >> Hi everybody, this is Dolly. Before he passed away, my daddy told me that the Imagination Library probably was the most important thing I'd ever done. Now, I can't tell you how much that meant to me because I created the Imagination Library as a tribute to my daddy. He was the smartest man I've ever known, but I knew in my heart his inability to read probably kept him from seeing all his dreams come true. Inspiring kids to love to read became my mission. >> Dolly Parton started the Imagination Library in 1999. Um it sent out a book a month to young children in her home state Tennessee. Um the program after that went nationwide. Now sends books to kids in the UK, Ireland, Canada, and Australia. Um so far over 200 million books have been sent out as part of the program. Um and she didn't just help the youth um during the COVID pandemic. She famously helped fund the Madna vaccine. >> Well, hey, it's me. I'm finally going to get my vaccine. I'm so excited. I've been waiting a while. I'm old enough to get it and I'm smart enough to get it. So, I'm very happy that I'm going to get my Madna shot today. And I wanted to tell everybody, I think you should get out there and do it, too. I even changed one of my songs to fit the occasion. It goes, "Vac, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine. I'm begging of you. Please don't hesitate. Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine. cuz once you're dead, then that's a bit too late. >> Now, of course, in our hyperartisan polarized world, um even vaccines have become a divisive subject, at least for Americans. Um but somehow Dolly Parton seemed to rise above it all. In 2019, the New York Times ran a piece titled, "Is there anything we can all agree on?" Um and the answer was, "Yes, Dolly Parton." Um and that was borne out after her passing. So this was Donald Trump on Truth Social. So he says, um, "Very sad to report that Dolly Pardon, one of the greatest country singers and far beyond ever, has just passed away. This is a true loss for millions of people. There has never been anyone like her and never will. In her honor, I am lowering the American flag throughout the United States for a oneweek period beginning tonight at 6:00 p.m. Rest in peace, Dolly. The world loves you, President Donald J. Trump. Now, if I'm honest, I'm not sure if this strikes me as something that doesn't happen very often. And I don't know whether they do this with sort of many artistic figures, but lowering every flag in the country for a week. I mean, that sounds like the kind of thing we do with the queen dies. Um, so that's the kind of the kind of person we're talking about here. Um, this was the Democratic Socialist of America. This is to show you the cross party support for Dolly Parton. Um, the DSA, you don't normally get them agreeing with Donald Trump, but they say Democratic Socialist of America extends our deepest condolences to the family, friends, and fans of Dolly Parton. A hero of the working class and an inspiration to us all. While many of us were inspired by Dolly's famous song and role from the movie 9 to5, showing that women and workers broadly deserve dignity and power, it is her broader life of advocacy that makes her a hero to us. We admire Dolly's lifelong commitment to uplifting poor and working-class communities. Towards the end of her life, Dolly was an unshaken advocate for queer and transame at a time when many others looked away. Through literacy programs and AIDS, HIV philanthropy, she humanized poorer parts of Appalachia and the South that are often forgotten about, never hesitating to stand up for those with less than others. The legacy of Dolly Parton is commitment to a world of freedom and dignity for all, a legacy we as DSA intend to carry forward. Um, to discuss Dolly Parton's legacy, I caught up with someone who's met the queen of country. Joe Stone is the joint lifestyle editor of The Guardian and he interviewed Dolly Parton for Attitude Magazine in 2011. I started by asking him um how Dolly Parton became the one cultural figure who seemingly everyone absolutely loves. >> Yeah, it's super interesting, isn't it? Because there is this thing which I don't know if you've heard of called a Q score, which is basically a global ranking of how people rate public figures. and she is consistently the least disliked public figure ever, which is a which is a slight head scratcher because it's not like she's really beige um and and like pedestrian. So, she's quite an out there character, isn't she? And it and it kind of does pose the question, why did so many people like her? Um and I guess part of the answer is because I know it's a bit of a cliche to say, but people are really attracted to authenticity. And I think there was something uniquely authentic about her. And one of her mottos was this thing that she said several times which was um figure out who you are and then do it on purpose. And I feel like she really did that. Like she figured out exactly who she was. She was inspired to dress like the town She said not necessarily, you know, a way to win conservative people round. But I think that the the fact that she did it kind of so freely and with such joy was very endearing to people. And I mean, is there an element of it where people can see whatever they want to see in her? Because her story very much like rags to riches, which is in one part like the American dream of the conservative, which is to say sort of anyone can come from um the bottom and become incredibly successful. She talks about herself as a business person. But then there are also people on the left who sort of look at the lyrics of 9 to5 and think this is an anti- capitalist. She's a socialist feminist. Is it that anyone can project onto her what they want? I think it's partly that and I think it's partly that she didn't take anything or she didn't appear to take anything too seriously, including herself. So, I think that I think people get really trenchant, don't they? People really hate a scold or they hate when they're being told um what to do. And I think that she had a real lightness or deafness of touch when it came to her kind of politics or her activism. And that may be another cheesy thing to say, but that maybe kind of one hearts in a way that that you don't if you're slightly more um I don't know if you're slightly more striden. >> Um and you so you interviewed her um in when when you in 2011. We can get up a picture. So our producer said that sort of you you look like you were trying to upstage her with that t-shirt. Um but before that you went to Dollywood when you were 19. So you were someone you were you know one everyone's interviewing people who were drawn to Dolly Parton at early periods in their lives where she really meant something to them. What drew you to Dolly Parton? >> I think it's the thing that I mentioned before that she was kind of unapologetically herself. I think that's I think that's really attractive. I think obviously her look um is very camp and very extra which definitely appeals to gay men. I think also I just really loved her music and it's really stood the test of time. You know, as a kid I was listening to songs that she had written in the 60s or 70s and they just slapped. So I think that's um you know I think one of one of the things that really crosses bridges is her is is just her music and her songwriting. I think Jolene's been covered upwards of 90 times um by everyone from like the White Stripes to Beyonce. And I think there's, you know, there's a there's a steely core of talent which probably attracts people from across all sorts of diverse spectrums. >> Um, let's go to a clip. Um, I want to talk about her relationship to the gays. Um, here is Dolly Parton speaking in 2009. >> I have a lot of gay fans, female and male, and I think I've been at this so long a lot of people feel like they've grown up with me. As you know, I've always been outspoken. I've always been pretty outrageous. I always believe that a person should be who they are and you should be comfortable being who you are and people should leave you alone to be who you are and how you are. So, I think I've always been accepted in the gay community because I accept them and I have uh so many fans that always love to come to the shows and they know that I'm not judging them. I think people are who they are and I'm not God. I'm not a judge. you. We're supposed to love each other exactly for who and what we are. >> So, that clip was from 2009. This one is much older. >> You ever wish you were born a guy? Do I ever wish I was born a guy? Lord, no. I've always been a And if I'd have been born a man, I'd have been a drag queen. >> And I lost a >> um how do you think Dolly Parton managed, I suppose, to to straddle being sort of considered an LGBT ally and then also, you know, being an icon also of conservative America. Yeah, I don't think it was I don't think it was a completely straightforward process because there was certainly things I know when they introduced um hosting gay days at Dollywood, they were picked by um religious groups and by the KKK and people like that. And I think there definitely was a lot of resistance to that. I think she didn't care. And I think the other thing which was really disarming about her is often the way that she framed her views was as if it was just common sense. um you know it wasn't particularly weighted in political theory. People would say, "How do you feel about gay people?" And she'd say, "Well, I I you know, I think God loves everyone or I think everyone's equal." And I think if you strip things back to basics, it's it's maybe harder to argue with. >> I suppose also the Christianity probably helped, right? She's often phrasing it sort of through God loves everyone. Who are we to judge? God does the judging, not us. Um okay, tell me about when you met her then. So you met her in 2011. Um what what was it like? What was she like? >> I met her in 2011, so it was the start of my journalism career. I hadn't done that many interviews. I think I'd written a popular column about loving Dolly Parton. So, I got sent to Nashville to interview her. The trip was me, Hudley Freeman from The Guardian, and Dale Winton. So, it was quite a funny combo. Um, I obviously was blacking out with nerves. I was so overwhelmed um to be doing it. Um, and it it didn't help that she strayed into the room, saw me, and went, "Are you my rider? You're tiny. You're a baby." Which is like very disarming. Um, and cute. She sung a lot of the interview. Um, one of the bits that always stays with me is I was there for Attitude Magazine, which is obviously a gay magazine. Um, so at some point in in the interview, I mentioned that that's who I was there on behalf of, and she leaned forward and touched my leg and said, "I could sense that you were gay. Um, so she was obviously psychic. Um, alongside everything else, she was really what I kind of bulldozed in because I hadn't done loads of interviews. I think my third question was, "Is it true you're secretly a lesbian?" And, um, she just totally took everything in her stride. She was really thoughtful. She was really warm. Um, and just like a complete ball of charisma. She was everything that you would want or need her to be. >> That was Joe Stone speaking to me earlier today. I can see lots of mixed feelings in the comments about covering Dolly Parton. I mean, I suppose to justify it, I think it is really impressive to have a cultural figure who in our very very divided society can have like Republicans, Democrats, gays, Christians, sort of like everyone saying, "Wow, she's brilliant." And and I do think there is like something to learn from that. I think everything becoming sort of like whose political team were they on? Do we mourn their death? There's something like a bit depressing about that. And so like everyone taking a break last night on Twitter from sort of whatever their f favorite bug bear is to just sort of say, "Oh my god, this woman was really cool." I think it's I think it's worth dwelling on for a little while. But we are moving on now. Um the news media, including here on YouTube, has an overwhelming negativity bias. What sells are stories of disasters, catastrophes, more than anything, a select few people doing very bad things. We love to hate on other people, right? Um there's nothing wrong with that, per se. We do that quite a bit. Um, but unless we also talk about the real progress humanity is making at the same time, we're not giving you an accurate perspective on the world, I'm endeavoring to make a bit more effort to change that, if only for mine and potentially your mental health. Um, to that end, last week scientists announced they developed a vaccine to prevent the recurrence of skin cancer. So the jab developed by Merc and Madna uses RM RNA technology to target specific mutations within a patient's cancer cells by surgically removing a small part of their tumor and then sequencing its DNA. Um this is used to create a personalized anti-cancer jab which works by training the body to recognize specific cancer cells um and then sort of instructing the immune system to attack those cells. Um, this made headlines after early results from a trial showed the vaccine was effective at preventing the return of cancer for patients who had previously had a melanoma removed. That's the sort of most dangerous type of skin cancer. And this all sounded pretty cool. So to find out more, I spoke to Salon Datani, founding editor of Works in Progress magazine and host of the podcast Hard Drugs. Um, I started by asking her about the significance of these Madna Merc results. >> They're very exciting results. Um this is the first time a personalized cancer vaccine has succeeded in clinical trials. Um these were specifically for melanoma which is a aggressive skin cancer. Um and they're tested after people have had gotten to stage three or so. Um and the vaccines seem to reduce the chances of the cancer coming back um by quite a lot. >> I suppose just to clarify because this is not like the normal kind of vaccine people think of. Normally a vaccine you get if you haven't had an illness and you hope that that means you will never get it. This isn't the kind of vaccine that everyone could suddenly get this skin cancer vaccine. It's for people who've had skin cancer and to try and help um prevent it coming back. Could you explain how that works? >> Exactly. That's right. What's happening is that someone who has cancer the the specific mutations their cancer has developed um are targeted by this vaccine. So what uh what the researchers and doctors are doing is they're looking at this patient with this tumor um this melanoma. They're finding out which genetic mutations it has and they're developing a vaccine specifically for that patient um designed to target those mutations and it helps uh the person's own immune system recognize those cancer cells and prevent it from coming back in the future. And I remember obviously sort of on on this show as sort of everyone's politics shows, we talked a lot about vaccines during the COVID pandemic. Haven't talked about them so much since. And I remember back then there was lots of talk about there being um sort of an M mRNA revolution in the pipeline. Everyone was saying now it's now it's a technology that's been proven to work. We can apply this to everything. Um is this the beginning of that or is this more of a one-off? >> I think in this case it is the beginning of that. Um this is the first time it's worked for cancer vaccines. Um, the reason that it's so promising in this case is because cancer tends to evolve very fast and mRNA technology is something that you can design and update very fast. Um, so that kind of really helps out in this case. Um, another reason that it's helpful is because mRNA tends to be quite immunogenic, meaning it causes a large reaction in people. Um, and that's something that people would have noticed. They often get uh, you know, fever uh, feverish symptoms just after they get the vaccine. um and that it's much stronger than it would be for other vaccines. Um that in this case is actually a huge benefit um because it means that your immune system is much more activated and it can u react to cancer cells as well. >> How effective is it? The other thing I remember from CO is we always hear is it 90% effective? Is it 80% effective? I don't know if that still applies when we're talking about a cancer as opposed to sort of a general virus, but what do we know about that? >> So in this case they haven't actually told us what the numbers are. Um so what what we do know is that the earlier trial which was um presented in June um that showed us a 50% reduction in recurrence or death um when people took this vaccine. Um so that's quite large and it's probably going to be quite similar to that um or maybe even slightly larger. Um and the reason that I think it might be larger is because the the whole clinical trial hasn't actually finished. and and let's talk about medical innovation more generally because I know this is sort of your your wheelhouse. Um you've just had a TED talk which has been released where I suppose you you sort of frame the conversation by talking about how people underrate the amount of medical progress we've had over the past 80 years because we sort of we tend to take it for granted. So I suppose yeah could you sort of cash out um the point you were trying to make um in the TED talk here. >> People often have this impression that medical breakthroughs are really uncommon. They're just they're happening by chance. Occasionally they happen. and we don't really know understand why and it's usually because of chance or something like that. Um and my argument is that that that's not true. Um and in fact it's this continuous stream of innovation that happens every year. Um a lot of that comes from you know academic funding and um you know pharma companies working on these things for decades sometimes and eventually we get to see the fruits of those progress. Um and what that means is that we also have the ability to change that. We can increase the pace of that progress with better funding institutions and incentives. >> Just in terms of some of the numbers because the point you you made in the TED talk, I know this is sort of part of progress studies which you're part of is to sort of say because progress often happens slowly, no one ever talks about it. So you hear about the the earthquake, the disaster, you hear about the medical malpractice in a NHS trust here or there, but you say if you you know if you if you zoom out some of the facts before the 1970s only 15% of children with leukemia would be alive 5 years after diagnosis. Now that figure is 85%. So this is real sort of your child dying or not this is this is big concrete stuff but we take it for granted because it's this sort of slow background story of progress. >> Yeah. I mean some of these are really huge changes. Another one um that I mentioned is the decline in heart disease um mortality rates. Um so people are living longer and part of the reason for that is because we're less likely to die at a given age of cancer or heart disease. Um heart disease specifically has had a very large drop of about 3/4 um since the 1950s. Um so our risk of dying at a given age is a quarter what it used to be. Um, I think part of the reason that people don't notice that is because it's sort of you're trying to recognize an omission. It's it's something that's not happening um as much as in the past and that's harder to notice >> and it wasn't just a rosy story you were putting forward. You were saying we need change as well cuz the title of the TED talk was we've solved many medical mysteries where are the cures. Um, so you are actually pointing out that we aren't getting as many cures as one would like. So I suppose could you cash out that argument? Yeah, one of the the best examples of that I think is the malaria vaccine. So we got a new malaria vaccine a few years ago. Um and uh I I remember reading this uh reading about this when it first came out and I wanted to write an article about it. Um and the first thing that I learned was that it was developed in the 1990s. Um and it just took literally decades for the researchers to find funding to test that vaccine and to run the clinical trials in Africa for it. Um part of the reason was that there just there actually weren't clinics in Africa that were able to run these clinical trials and so the researchers themselves had to fund these um clinical trial sites. Um and there's just very little commercial incentive to develop vaccines like that because the people who are using them are kids in poverty. Um and it's just not profitable for them to develop vaccines like that. Um so you know part of the motivation for my talk was if we had we have had lots of medical breakthroughs but we could be having so many more. Um, and the reason for that is, you know, the fact that these things are shaped by incentives and institutions and funding. Um, and if we can change those, we can make much more progress than we're currently seeing. >> And I suppose more generally, I know sort of because you you're following medical innovation closely. Also, you're quite a big picture thinker. Um, when will we cure cancer? >> I'm cautiously optimistic. I think the way that I would describe it is that I think so so many better things are possible but they could be happening so much faster than we're currently seeing. Um one of the things that I work on is clinical trial reform. Um so currently even if you do have you know really amazing drugs in the pipeline or let's say AI is able to create these you know hugely successful um drug candidates you still have to put them through clinical trials and actually test whether they work and the process to do that currently takes about 10 years on average um for a single drug and that's really long and that's not because it takes 10 years to collect um high quality data. It's because of various things like it's very difficult to recruit participants into clinical trials or the disease takes a long time to develop or um there are various manufacturing and like administrative things that companies or researchers have to do before they can even get a trial started. So a lot of these kind of administrative and like operational things are things that I think we could be we could make more efficient without even compromising on quality at all. Um and in some cases they could even improve it. >> And finally lots of the AI executives at the moment are sort of telling us that their models when they get super smart are basically going to cure all disease and that's why we should all get behind the data centers and and that's why we shouldn't put too heavy regulation on them. Um do you do you buy that? Do you think that open AI and anthropic might solve all disease so we can live forever? >> I'm quite skeptical. Um I'm I'm sort of hopeful that there are going to be there are there is going to be a lot of progress that comes out of that. But curing all disease, especially in 10 years, which um I think Demis and Dario Amod have both said will happen. I I just don't think that's realistic at all. Um the main reason for that is how long it takes to run clinical trials. um a lot of the data that you would need to develop effective drugs or to know whether they would work um comes from that experimental data and we don't have access like or they don't have access to that data either. Um and those trials actually haven't been run. So if we want to test out and like you know use trial and error to see which of their potential drugs might actually work, it's going to take a long time. Um, and the human body is just way more complicated, I think, than a lot of people appreciate. Um, for example, one of the big things that AI companies are doing right now is trying to simulate a single cell in the lab. Um, and that's just one cell. And this is a huge challenge and like people are still working on this and it might take a few years um to do that even for the most some of the most simple cells. Um, but that's just one cell and we have trillions of cells in our body. And you know, that is such a harder challenge. Um, I just don't think it's really possible for us to get to curing all diseases in in such a short time. >> I suppose curing all diseases in 10 years is fairly ambitious. Um, Salon Datani. Um, and thank you so much for joining us. Really, really appreciate it. >> Thank you so much for having me. >> That was Salon Datani there speaking to me earlier. I have to say I I sort of miss talking about medical science. Obviously I did it a lot during the co pandemic. Obviously they were very sort of difficult circumstances. Um I don't want to wait for another pandemic to come along to to talk about medical scientific advancements. Um so I really enjoyed that interview. Um let me know in the comments if you want to hear more about that or if you want if you're saying what's why aren't you railing against um the Tories or Farage or Bum. Don't worry that's coming. Nigel Farage has never looked less comfortable than when he's defending the5 million pound gift he accepted from the cryptobillionaire Christopher Harbaugh. >> You haven't spent any of it. >> It's none of your business. It's literally none of your How much of your salary do you spend on beer on on petrol? It's none of your business. >> I think it is the public's business to know it's not the public's business. >> Well, it's being investigated by the Parliamentary Standards Committee, so it's somebody's business. They're saying you need security. A legitimate point. Yeah. >> How much of that money have you spent on security so far? >> I'm sorry. I I Well, I know I'm not going to answer that deliberately, willfully. >> Obviously, instead of answering those questions, Nigel Faras called that stupid bi-election, which is now one, but the parliamentary investigation has now resumed. Um, that is probably going to focus on the timing of his 5 billion5 million pound gift. Sorry, not 5 billion, 5 million pound gift from Christopher Harbaugh. Um, and the issue is whether or not he could be considered a public or private individual when he received the money. So, it was a bit before the election. If he was a politician at the point he received the money, he should have declared it. If he was a private citizen, he can say, um, he didn't need to declare it. That would be what most of the debate entails. Um, however, um, from my perspective, the details about the donation in the first place are the more interesting elements of this story and specifically who Christopher Harbaugh is, why he backed Far, right? This to me is where sort of the potential corruption, the interests come in. The investigative outlet DMOG has a new report on Harbbor. Um his crypto company Teor or crypto company he sort of part owns Teor and the links between Teor Reform and the Trump White House. Um the article was written by Sam Bright and Ollie Haynes both previous contributors to this show. Um, I caught up with Sam earlier today and I started by asking him to talk about the company at the center of this political and financial network that's Teor. >> Basically, it it issues uh a cryptocoin, a stable coin as it calls it called uh USDT. Um, and why it's different from other crypto firms is that it backs its cryptocurrency with dollars and other assets, which is why it's called a stable coin. Um, whereas like the accusation is that Bitcoin is like based on air, as is a lot of other cryptocurrencies. Tether, hence the name, is actually tethered to the US dollar, which in theory makes it less volatile. Um, but the company itself, um, and the currency, it's it's huge. Um, it's the biggest stable coin provider in the world. So, it's an absolute colossus in this industry. And until a few years ago, certainly in the UK, Hasn't really been talked about. >> Members of the audience might be thinking, well, it's a colossal of the stable coin industry. What the hell is the stable coin industry? Now, from before reading your article, I hadn't realized quite how big a deal teor is. So you're saying it's it's at the moment looking to secure an injection of private capital that would give it a valuation of $500 billion which make it one of the biggest companies in the world. Um and you say that given Harbornne owns 13% of Teor. So Christopher Harborn if it reaches this valuation Harbaugh would become the world's 30th richest man. And I think so when when we hear about you know Farage getting donations from this Thai based cryptobillionaire you kind of just think of him as sort of you know just any old rich guy. um a bit like um Aaron Banks or something, but this is someone who is is a really really big deal um when it comes to global finance. >> Yeah, he's a super super rich guy. I mean, to put it into a bit of context, if Tether was valued at uh 500 billion, it would be in the same realms of like Open AI and the you know the AI giants that are that are achieving ludicrous valuations to be honest. So yeah, Harborn, you know, he doesn't have an executive role in Tether, so he doesn't sort of make any decisions there. He's just sort of a passive shareholder. he's held on to like 13% of the company which could balloon astronomically um if it achieves this you know this injection of capital um which would allow him sort of unlimited resources to pile into reform to to buy British democracy potentially. Um, so yeah, you can you can trace his source of of money and therefore his power politically very directly back to this to this firm and he's fairly sort of passive passive interest in it. Harborn's given more than£25 million to reform as you know as you're sort of pointing out if he becomes the world's 30th richest man he's going to be able to afford a lot more than that. Um, but what's his official explanation for why he's he's given that money? Does he just say I'm a very rich guy who happens to believe um in you know independence from the European Union and less migration to Britain? Is that the argument? >> Yeah, he's a really funny one as most of these billionaire donors are actually when when you sort of study them the reasons that they give for donating or a lot of the actually a lot of the personal philosophies that they hold are quite inongruous to why he's donating to reform. So I'll give you I'll give an example of that actually Michael. So he owns a wellness retreat in Thailand in Kosamui that's just like this woke retreat where people can go do yoga and meditation and there's like no alcohol and no phones allowed by the pool. It's the sort of thing that would be like would be flayed by by the Telegraph on its front page if it was someone else who was owning it. Um but his stated reason above all else for giving to Farage is Brexit is to get Brexit done properly, whatever that means, you know, um you imagine it would mean closer to a no deal uh scenario. Um should we cast our minds back a few years to what that looked like. So, you know, complete separation from the European Union and pulling us closer to to Trump's America. And what Harbaugh is essentially is he's a Thatcherite. um he credits you know his not just his his political ideologies but his personal decisions uh to Margaret Thatcher. So he decided to go and study engineering at Cambridge because of that because he saw Thatcher speak in Westminster. Harbaugh attended the Uber posh Westminster school just around the corner and he says that we need to go back to the 1980s. Farage, as we know, despite all of his man of the people chat, is a Thatcherite. That's that's the reason it comes back to raw neoliberal economics, as it as it often does. Um, and what your article is really pointing out is how Teor, so the world's biggest stable coin company, potentially worth $500 billion, is at the middle of a network of right-wing politics on both sides of the Atlantic. And I mean, we've just discussed the connection to Farage. Um, when it comes to the United States, the connection is via Howard Lutnik, who is Trump's commerce secretary. So, could you talk about the relationship between Howard Lutnik and Teor? >> Yeah. So, it goes back a few years. Um, so back in 2021, Tether was in a spot of bother. Um, I won't go into the details, but it had been fined $60 million. Tether and its various associate companies. Um and basically bankers didn't really want anything to do with it apart from Howard Lucknik's firm uh Caner Fitzgerald um that rode to the rescue and said we'll do business with you. Um we'll help you to build up those assets those dollars um that underpin the the success and the valuation of Tether. Um and in the process, Counterfe Fitzgerald, which was owned by Lutnik, took a 5% stake in Tether. Um in the subsequent years, Tether's valuation, its profits have boomed. In 2024, uh its profits were one and a half times that of McDonald's. It's been called the most profitable company in history by employee. And that means that Caner Fitzgerald's stake in the firm has ballooned accordingly. and it's worth up to 25 billion quid. Now, um Lutnick himself had to divest his shares in Caner Fitzgerald um when he joined the White House, but those shares in the company were passed to his children. Uh and in the in the sort of melee of that takeover, Tether happens to pro provide a loan to Lutnik's children. And we don't know if that helped them to buy the shares, but it happened at the same time. So, make your own minds up. Uh, and the final piece of this jigsaw is that while Lutnik was overseeing the transition team and while he was in, he's been in the White House, um, they've drafted obviously heavily pro- crypto legislation that Bloomberg's reported, you know, Lucknik had a hand in and would directly benefit Tether and therefore the financial financial interests of both Lutnik's children and a Faraj's biggest donor, >> Teor and crypto in general. is a very politically exposed industry, isn't it? So, I mean, lots of people would accuse it of saying it's it's basically allowing money laundering um because it's an unregulated realm of the financial sector and it allows for anonymity. And obviously, the the share prices of well, this is a private company, but the sort of the value of these companies would would tumble if there were to be strict political regulation. And there have been lots of calls for political regulation because why are we allowing these companies that facilitate drug dealing and money laundering um to to operate freely. So it is very important for the future of Teor's profitability that they have allies in well particularly the White House. Obviously that's the best ally to have. Um but also it wouldn't be any harm to have an ally in Downing Street as well if if Nigel Farage were to to win a general election. So I suppose yeah talk to me about this from from Teor's perspective. Are they buying up politicians on both side of the Atlantic? They've sort of perhaps opportunistically allied with right-wing populism because they see this as a way where they can prevent regulation coming forward which would threaten their business model. >> Yeah, absolutely. And I'll talk more generally about the the industry I think for uh for for the sake of not getting sued. But um I think the industry as a whole it's it's facing a a political battle at this moment um where you've got governments across the world considering um how to regulate the industry as you say like do they keep it on a tight leash? Do they allow it free rain? Like this is all up for grabs basically this massive industry that seems to have ballooned overnight. And yes, what essentially the industry has done um particularly in the US is to pile millions and millions of quid um into particularly right-wing politicians because they're in favor of deregulation in order to um in order to bring about that world in order to essentially um conduct their business as they please. Um, I mean, it's deeply ironic actually that Donald Trump called uh called cryptocurrencies called I think he called Bitcoin a con um just a few years ago. Uh and last year he made over a billion quid from his various dodgy crypto schemes. And he's, you know, probably the most pro crypto politician in the world at this minute, closely followed by Nigel Farage. So they've seen that they can get a re a huge return on their investment by piling as much money as pos possible into politics. And I think this is it's just represent representative of the fact that all corporate donations are corrupting to our political process and in my personal view they should be they should be outlawed. You know you've got essentially a guy and let's face it 25 million quid is an awful lot of money. um maybe not to Nigel Farage but to most people. Um but it's a drop in the ocean for someone like Christopher Harbaugh who's you know who's worth 18 billion quid on paper as it is currently and that's even without Tether's valuation uh ballooning uh you know in all and he and he's devoted that 25 million quid to essentially buy a political party. I'm not saying Harbaugh himself has any personal sort of financial um is making a financial play. Um but a lot of donors are a lot of donors are putting relatively small sums of money into our political system and essentially buying our whole the buying the mechanism through which policy can be can be written. Um, and I think there's I think there's no more active industry on that front currently than the crypto industry. >> And isn't that cuz I know you're saying sort of like this is a a lesson about all political donations and how they're corrupting. And obviously, you know, I I take your point. Um, I think you're correct, but I do think there is something even more specific about crypto that is perhaps under discussed because if it were the case that sort of, you know, there was a wind farm company donating to the Labor Party or some car manufacturers donating to the Tory party, you know, fair enough. These are industries that everyone understands. Um, you might have different views about them, but they're part of the real economy. Um, if these are sort of, you know, there are some businesses where you can say they're to some degree part of civil society. Crypto isn't one of them. So I I don't think you speak to any voters who think, "Oh yeah, crypto that's a useful industry." Like I I still haven't really heard an explanation of why crypto is useful other than it allows people to launder money because it allows for anonymity as money is moved across borders. So if you've got this as sort of the key fun as an industry to, you know, the Republican party in the United States and reform here, that is there's something new about that, right? because it's always been the case that businesses have donated to political parties and then hoped for some favors in return. Now, that's often been to the detriment of voters. Sometimes it, you know, might have helped grow. Who knows? There's arguments like that made about China, which is to say that sort of sometimes the relationship between politicians and businesses sort of isn't necessarily the most corrosive thing in the world. But when the business in question is socially useless and also socially quite dangerous, it does seem like something we probably should be talking more about. >> Yeah, absolutely. And I think they benefit from that sense of anonymity. I think they try to have it both ways currently that they donate very heavily to politics. Um but also they want to remain in the shadows for as as long as possible. Um I would say though, I mean essentially, yeah, I think you're correct in that crypto is elaborate an elaborate form of betting. Um basically you put your money in crypto in the hopes that it'll inflate and that you'll get a nice a nice payback in a few years time. And it's, you know, for many it's sort of recreational rather than anything productive. But I would also say that since basically 2010, um, British politics has been funded by the city of London, by hedge funds, by investment bank, by investment bankers. And, you know, do they do anything more more productive than than uh than than crypto traders do? I Yeah, I think it's more known about what hedge funds do than the crypto industry. But in terms of that, you know, you're just hedging your bets on a particular a particular company to a particular a particular stock versus you're hedging your bets on a particular cryptocurrency. I don't think there's a massive there's a massive difference and I think that fundamentally the playbook has been sort of written by finance by the city of London for the past 15 years and crypto is just following in that footsteps in those footsteps. >> Yeah, I suppose that's a good point. The sort of contrast I'm making is maybe to something which hasn't existed for a very long time which is sort of when you got major employers. So maybe you got trade unions donating to the Labour party and then major employers donating to the Conservative party and you can sort of see how you know that while not ideal sort of is is sort of potentially you can argue has some legitimacy whereas with crypto and you're saying with the city of London neither of those can make that claim. Um do you think this could bring down Nigel Farage? >> Yeah I do. I do. Um, and I think this is the only only the beginning. I think we've only scratched the surface. You know, we've got we got the parliamentary investigation into Harbon's 5 million gift, which is almost inevitably going to find against Farage, and then we'll have to uh we'll have to trot back to to Clton again in a few weeks. Um, and the police are investigating, you know, various donations made to made to reform. Um, I think that this will be this will be extremely off-putting to new donors as well. um to the party who see that there's an immense amount of scrutiny justifiably and they're not they're not going to want to, you know, involve themselves with with an organization that's that's embroiled in scandal and, you know, a whiff of impropriety. Um, and I think fundamentally, you know, as with most politicians, Boris Johnson was very similar in this respect. uh once they lose that Man of the People aura, once people think you're the same as the rest of them, you're only in it for yourself, I think I think you're just you're just setting yourself up for failure. And I think that although it'll take it'll take a short while for it to break through to the population at large, um I think that's inevitably the course that Farage is on. I mean I I suppose the the counter would be that you know Donald Trump's relationship to crypto has sort of involved personal enrichment which is way more out there than Nigel Farage is. I mean the details about Nigel Farage aren't good but Donald Trump literally has started his own Trump coins to fleece his supporters. So, you know, this new world of shameless companies that serve no social function and politicians who are only out to serve themselves, you know, it's not necessarily one that has proven itself to be unfit to thrive in the present political moment. It's true, although let's see what's what happens at the midterms. Um, I think that there's not really been a test of Trump's political standing in the sort of the high corruption era of the second Trump administration. I think, you know, you just look at Trump's poll ratings are at rock bottom. Uh, reform slipped by 10% or more in the polls um over the past year. Um I think that voters are I think obviously you've got that sort of hardcore base who will support them no matter what. Um and say that oh you know they've earned it that this is just payback for Brexit and all they've done in the world. But I think there's a lot of voters and you you can see this in the polling actually that a lot of voters um 2024 conservative voters who are considering reform. now going back to the conservatives because there's just that sense that everything needs to be right for Farage to really like to really um produce a ground swell towards him. And I think lots of sort of traditional Tories who um consider themselves to behave properly and you know got this sort of um ethical base to them. Um although economically, you know, their their ideologies might be questionable, I think that Farage is really offputting. I think Farage is sort of brazen self-interest and the way in which he's trying to make money from politics, it seems. I think that's quite off-putting to a lot of the sort of home counties conservatives who might otherwise be considering the party. Um and I think as a result, he needs those people. he absolutely needs to uh he needs to destroy the Conservative party in order to win office. And if a lot of those people are sort of in two minds as to whether to back him, I think that I I just don't think he's going to get that critical mass needed to take him over the line, especially given that he's not, you know, one of the two dominant parties. >> That was Sam Bright speaking to me earlier today. You can read his article on dsmog.com. Great website. Um we're going to wrap up slightly early today because it's just me in the studio. Um, I can't talk to myself for 10 minutes. Um, so let's wrap up there. Thank you everyone for tuning in. Um, come back tomorrow for another live stream from 6 p.m. For now, you've been watching Nvar Media. Good night.