Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (3:25)

It does worry me, but I think we should be clear that not all politicians have lost focus on this. In many ways, the most important economy in the world, just in terms of emissions, is China. It's the biggest economy in the world if you measure output in a sensible way through what we call purchasing power parity. It has been the biggest economy in the world for 15 years or so on that measure. And they take this very seriously. And they take it very seriously for very good reason, because they have their population concentrated in coastal areas. They depend in large measure, as does India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and so on, for the waters off the Himalayas. And if you lose those snow and the ice there, you're in deep trouble. Some politicians have stepped back, but other politicians have kept the focus. But it does worry me that in Europe we seem to be not exactly stepping back, but not stepping forward with the pace that one would hope for.

Robert Peston (4:29)

But just on China, you know, they are building new nuclear very rapidly. They are obviously the world's leading manufacturer of solar panels and other technologies that should help for the whole world to reduce emissions if rolled out at the requisite pace. But they are still commissioning coal fired power stations and their emissions are still rising. So when you say they're taking it seriously, surely they're not taking it seriously enough?

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (4:59)

Well, nobody's taking it seriously enough. But just look at the facts of what's happening in China. Their emissions will probably stabilize about now because they are adding some coal fired power stations, they're decommissioning other coal fired power stations and they're adding renewable capacity and nuclear capacity at a quite phenomenal rate. They've been adding renewable capacity at a rate of around 300 gigawatts a year, the total in the UK. Everything accumulated over time, looking across everything, is about 80.

Robert Peston (5:33)

So what is your 80?

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (5:34)

The 80 gigawatts in the UK roughly, is all the electricity generating capacity, both

Robert Peston (5:41)

renewable and non renewable. And you're saying that in China the increase in renewable capacity per annum is essentially four times that?

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (5:51)

Yes, yes. They will probably peak in the next year or so. Around now they've committed to peaking by 2030 and they will do it early.

Robert Peston (6:00)

So one of the things I have been struck by is how unbelievably rapidly they are. As you say, commissioning, for example, nuclear, right. We are still years away from commissioning. Even Hinckley, which has just been going on forever in terms of the build and the costs are now absolutely through the roof. I think more than 40 billion pounds is the estimated cost of just that one plant. The UK has decided, for security reasons, we can't have the Chinese building our nuclear power stations. Is that the right decision for the uk? Because it turns out the French, who we are relying on, don't seem to be as fast as we would like.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (6:42)

I think it's very important that we talk about the speed in terms of what we have to do. From the point of view of the climate, the next 10 or 15 years are absolutely crucial. We really do need to get to net zero across the world by 2050 to have any chance now of holding to well below 2 degrees. Because we're already seeing, with what we've got, very severe effects and we're very close to tipping points and that's gonna get worse. So it's very important to focus on what we do as a world in the next 10 or 15 years. And that's why nuclear is not, as it were, the first thing to discuss. Because the first thing to discuss is how we can build our non fossil fuel, our zero carbon capacity quickly. And there it's quite clearly renewables.

Robert Peston (7:27)

You're talking wind and solar, essentially.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (7:30)

Yeah, wind and solar.

Robert Peston (7:30)

Wind, solar and battery storage.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (7:32)

With battery storage and with better grids. The better the grid, the less, less storage you need. But you're going to need quite a lot of storage. But it's very important to get that time dimension clear. But this problem is sufficiently severe that we should be looking at everything and we should be looking at nuclear. It should be part of the story. But in the UK that's not coming quickly. It'll be small modular reactors. I think that will be more important than the big things like Hinkley Point.

Robert Peston (7:58)

But even that technology is not yet proven in the uk.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (8:01)

Well, they use it for submarines and so on. I mean, not proven is probably too strong, but to be able to produce those on scale and at reasonable cost. See, renewables are much cheaper than the rest of it. But I do think nuclear should be part of the story. And I think in the UK it'll be small modular reactors. That will be probably the future of nuclear in the UK. But it's very important to focus on the next 10 or 15 years. And that takes you inexorably to renewables?

Steph McGovern (8:28)

Yeah. Part of the problem, though is that for lots of people, climate change feels like something esoteric, something long term, something that isn't impacting them now. You know, they're dealing with economic crises themselves now with concerns about living standards and everything else. How do you incentivise and convince people that this is worth doing now and not something that they can just park, like saving for a pension?

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (8:56)

One is an understanding of the dangers. And part of what's changed in the last 10 years or so is that people experiencing these things much more directly. So people do recognize a living climate change. They see wildfires, they see the intensity of those increasing, they see the extreme heat. Is it enough to stop them in their tracks just yet? I think the answer to that empirically is no, it's not yet. But it's very important to have that discussion and keep that discussion in the public eye. The second thing is that this is a much more attractive way of growing that. This is the growth story of the 21st century. Why? Because the clean is already cheaper than the dirty across electricity and much of surface transport. And that fraction will grow. It's where the exciting innovations are going to come. It's where AI is going to be so powerful. It's where you've got increasing returns to scale. Cities where you can move and breathe are much more productive than cities where you can't. We kill in the UK about 35,000 a year from air pollution. That's 20 times more than road accidents. We kill in the world five or ten million people a year from air pollution. The number of people who die per year in the world would be a little over 50. This is huge. And all this is about better and stronger growth. And of course we do have to invest a lot and this is of critical importance. We do have to invest a lot to get to that new attractive growth story.

Robert Peston (10:33)

I suppose the thing that I find striking, and many people would say it's a bit depressing, is if you go back, say five years, we had huge numbers of young people in particular on our streets protesting against fossil fuel emissions, calling for this environmental and economic transition. That was rational because it was their futures that were being mortgaged, that, you know, it was their futures that, you know, on the scenarios that you have described would be devastated if global warming is not curtailed. It's striking to me actually, that the heat, as it were to use, that has seems to have got out of those protests. I don't know whether it's a weariness. I Don't know whether it's a despondency. I don't know whether it's just that there are now other so many egregious problems in the world, whether it's emotions that are generated by what they see in Gaza or the emotions that are generated by other things that the new American President is doing. But it is quite interesting to me. Whereas many people would say the biggest priority for the world is reversing climate change, nonetheless, you don't see that in the kind of protests that we did see, let's say, five years ago, I

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (12:00)

think on the streets. That's. That's right. But if you look at the surveys of what worries people, that still comes, particularly for young people, very high.

Robert Peston (12:10)

But you think there is a fatalism now that somehow, because it seems to me slightly, the challenge I would give to you is you have been saying these things consistently for 20 years.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (12:19)

Right.

Robert Peston (12:20)

And I just slightly worry that we are in a. And a few years ago, I think there was a sense, particularly among young people, that we can change the world for the better. And I worry that we have entered a world of fatalism, that what will be will be, and there's nothing we can do about it. And I'm really asking you whether you've got ideas about how you break that mindset and give people hope that this future is in their hands and in particular, whether that is remotely possible. While Donald Trump is in the White House, powerful man in the world, climate change denier, essentially saying he's going to exploit as much of the fossil fuels that America has is possible. Broadly, I would argue around the world, there's a sort of view that says nothing is possible until his four year term is over.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (13:14)

The understanding of the problem is, I think, increasing on the whole with education, with exposure. That's empirical. Yeah. The people on the streets and the intensity of the street process is not, not what it was a, a few years ago. But I think it's very important to distinguish between the understanding and the intensity of the political pressure.

Robert Peston (13:37)

But politicians don't have to respond if they're not feeling under pressure.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (13:40)

They don't. And that's why it's so important to keep the argument going. That's why I'm here today. You know, Robert and Steph, this is a story that we have to constantly discuss, constantly bring to attention, marshal the evidence we have to bring the positive story. And increasingly the positive story is visible. I mean, 20 years ago, the cost of renewable electricity was probably 20 times what it is now. This isn't a marginal change, this is a colossal change. If you look across the countryside and see solar panels in a not very sunny country, that has multiplied enormously in the uk, electric vehicles now are cheaper in much of the world and will be cheaper, cheaper here too, before long than their counterparts. And of course, you don't have to put petrol in them. People are seeing now evidence of what is happening to the climate and they're seeing the opportunities. Are they seeing them strongly enough yet to make the kind of protest and pressure that will be necessary? No, but it's very important not to deny the very strong movement in the understanding of what's going on, the experience of what's going on and the opportunities, because that's what we have to build on to get to the pressure that we need.

Steph McGovern (15:00)

There's lots of structural things that need to change though, aren't there, in terms of, like you've mentioned about renewable energy being cheaper. But the way it works in the energy market here is the unit of energy is based on the highest price of the, which is often gas. So it ends up going, yes, and it ends up going to a higher cost because of that. And also things like, you know, we, you know, we've talked a lot about zonal pricing on this program and it seems to be really to get that through. So people are paying, you know, if you live near a wind farm, you'll pay less for your energy. And all of these things, which would help consumers to be more economic and more environmental, is out of their power.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (15:40)

I think it's extremely important in the UK that we get energy prices to fall before the next election because the clean is cheaper than the dirty. But the way we do our pricing structure at the moment does not reveal that.

Robert Peston (15:54)

People don't understand that the reason we're paying so much for energy is because we're too reliant on gas. And I mean, it's sort of mad that we have a political debate at the moment where both of the right wing parties, the Tories and reform, are both saying we've got to pull back from our net zero targets. And for reasons that are slightly beyond me, they are getting quite a lot of traction because people seem to think that it is essentially the transitional costs that are making energy so expensive, rather than the fact that it is our overdependence on gas that is the big driver of our pricing, it's the legacy

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (16:33)

costs that make it so expensive. So it's very important that we get those arguments across that the clean is cheaper than the dirty. And that the reason our prices are so high is because of the basis on fossil fuel and the reason we're so insecure is because of the dependence on fossil fuels. But I think we can make that argument and we should, and we will, and we are.

Robert Peston (16:54)

What would be the one reform or the one or two reforms you would like to see them do that would get those prices down?

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (17:00)

I think I would get away from the marginal cost pricing in the very narrow, short run sense of the term. You do need standby, you do need backup, but you should be able to make contracts where the people who are going to provide it on the margin have a long term contract to stand by and do that. I think you could load more of the transition costs onto gas rather than electricity.

Robert Peston (17:24)

Why not just put it through the

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (17:25)

general taxation system and you can do that as well. But I don't want to lose the Trump point.

Robert Peston (17:31)

Robert, Just. Is anything possible till he leaves the White House?

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (17:34)

The answer is unambiguous. Yes, there is. The good folk of Texas will be investing, as they did during the last Trump presidency, strongly in solar and wind. There'll be cities and states in the United States that will continue as they did during the last Trump presidency. And in many ways they're better equipped to do that because prices have fallen so much, costs have fallen so much in the eight years that have elapsed since then. So first thing is that stuff will continue in the United States as it did last time. And because the costs have fallen so much, we have to turn to China because they're the biggest emitters. Roughly half their car sales were electric cars last year. As I said, their zero carbon capacity is already bigger than the fossil fuel capacity and electricity generation. They have lots to do on their grids so that they use their renewables better and storage. And they're doing. They're doing that. So you're seeing movement in the biggest economy in the world and the biggest emitter in the world, which is China. I think Europe will continue. The energy security arguments, of course, in Europe are so important. And the solar and wind give you the security. You're going to see stronger and stronger. Link UPS with North Africa. North Africa is going to be a major source of electricity for Europe.

Robert Peston (19:00)

This is solar in North Africa that then gets piped to Europe. Is that right?

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (19:05)

Yes. Cabled, yeah. Cabled, yeah.

Robert Peston (19:07)

When I say pipes, I mean cables.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (19:09)

You send the molecules down the pipe, you send the electrons down the cable, but. Exactly right. Exactly right.

Robert Peston (19:15)

I'm using a metaphor.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (19:16)

You'd Want a little bit of pedantry on your podcast?

Robert Peston (19:18)

Surely we have no shortage.

Steph McGovern (19:20)

Yes, thank you, Nick. We do need more of it.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (19:22)

Thanks. So what I wanted to point to is that A United States in many areas will continue and B other parts of the world will keep moving. And I think it's very important to recognize that Trump has stepped back in trade, he stepped back in aid, he stepped back in health, he stepped back in finance, he stepped back in security in all those areas, he stepped back on the world stage. Somebody steps back, other people will step forward and that is exactly what is happening. China has been thinking about this strategically for a long time and of course acceleratingly so in these last months, I think European Europe is stepping forward on security as it should, and I think Europe should step forward on China as well. So the way in which we step forward in international finance will be through the multilateral financial institutions. They should be trebling in these next five years what they lend. And let me remind you that whilst the World bank has a heavy United States shareholding, here are five multilateral development banks with zero United States shareholding. The Asia Infrastructure Investment bank, the European Investment bank, the New Development bank, the so called BRICS bank, the Islamic Development Bank Caf in Latin America. And they're more.

Robert Peston (20:51)

And they should be lending to projects in places like Africa that are clean power projects. That's what you're saying.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (20:58)

That is a particularly important example, Robert. The total electricity capacity in Africa is probably 250, 300 gigawatts total.

Robert Peston (21:07)

Blimey, nothing. So that's less than China's annual increase.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (21:10)

And that's exactly the point that China's capacity in solar to produce per year is over 1000. This is a fantastic opportunity to really get electricity across Africa. How do you do it? Well, you work the multilateral development banks in China which would be stepping forward where the United States has stepped back and doing something enormous important. You can't digitize without electricity. I mean, so much depends on it.

Steph McGovern (21:39)

At this Lord's Mart, we want to still talk to you about Nick, but sit tight for a couple of minutes,

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (21:45)

close your eyes, exhale, feel your body

Katie K. / Anthony Scaramucci (21:49)

relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (21:53)

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Robert Peston (22:10)

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Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (22:13)

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Robert Peston (22:47)

We've talked a lot about substituting dirty power with clean power. Another big and contentious issue at the moment is the extent to which we need to see behavioral change. So one of the things that is striking about this government is one, it has said it wants to see airport expansion, including Heathrow. Two, it has delayed the phasing out of petrol hybrid cars. And three, one of the technologies that it is investing an enormous amount in is carbon capture, which would actually maintain dependence on oil and gas. So I'm just wondering, are these policies genuinely consistent with their ambition to hit our net zero targets?

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (23:47)

I think that part of the story is mixed. In answer to your question, carbon capture and storage will matter. Cement, for example, is going to be difficult to decarbonise without carbon capture and storage.

Robert Peston (24:02)

So you think there is some kind of a role for carbon capture?

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (24:04)

I mean, cement is a very important example. Sure. And so, yes, there is, because I'm

Robert Peston (24:09)

slightly worried, particularly because that is definitely not a proven technology.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (24:14)

Oh, well, again, that's not quite right. There's quite a lot of carbon capture and storage actually going on. I mean, for example, in the United States, enhanced oil recovery, you know, where you capture the carbon dioxide and stick it back down the oil fields and get.

Robert Peston (24:30)

But that is not the same as what is proposed in the UK at the moment.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (24:33)

Well, it's still storing, it's pumping the CO2 underground. So let's put the carbon capture to one side because we are going to need some of it. And we're going to need direct air capture at some point too, because we'll quite shortly overshoot the 1.5 degrees, so we'll have to take stuff out. We need to do a lot of research on bringing down the cost of direct air.

Robert Peston (24:53)

I was going to say that is definitely not yet commercially proven.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (24:56)

So it is. Yeah, it's a proven technology, but it's jolly expensive. So you're right, you Said commercially proven. That's correct. If you look at the future of air transportation, the future of air transport lies in essentially zero carbon sustainable aviation fuel. That's quite a way away. There's lots of stuff that's close. Yeah. Like green steel. But the sustainable air fuel is probably quite a long way away.

Robert Peston (25:25)

So should we be expanding our airport capacity?

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (25:27)

We should be doing a number of things. We should be getting more people to travel by train. Yeah, man.

Steph McGovern (25:35)

You're joking. On your.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (25:36)

Yeah.

Steph McGovern (25:36)

And I spend my life on trains and like, because I am someone who has to come down from the northeast of England to London and more often than not the flying is cheaper and more reliable. So that's part of the problem, isn't it?

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (25:49)

That's exactly what I'm saying. We have to invest more.

Steph McGovern (25:51)

Yeah, we do, yeah.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (25:52)

But we also have to recognize that flying will increase and it's very important. Two things. One, people should pay for the damage that, that they do.

Robert Peston (26:03)

So we're not paying enough?

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (26:04)

No, we're not paying enough for the.

Steph McGovern (26:07)

Don't we need to be faster on sorting out the fuel? Because the issue is not the flying, as you say, it's the fuel that's used to fly.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (26:12)

It's both. You want people to fly. Yes. Less. But recognizing that that's not going to go away. So that you have to push very hard on sustainable air fuel. And that is something which I think the UK could work with other countries in the world.

Robert Peston (26:26)

But I suppose, look, here is the. What you might call the Nigel Farage question, which is if airfares go up to reflect their climate damage, a lot of people on middle to low incomes won't be able to fly. It'll become the preserve of the rich. And that doesn't look fair to most people.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (26:48)

People wouldn't understand. They might not be happy about paying the real costs of what they do. And that's an argument which we have to put. It won't be just a preserve of the rich. Airfares should go up, but they won't go up so far as to prevent people altogether. It's a matter of doing less. Yeah. And we should be doing less flying motivated by paying properly for what's done, investing hugely in working to find sustainable air fuels and investing very strongly in the alternatives, which is rail and zero carbon road transport. So there's not a simple one line answer because you're talking about the whole transport system, Robert. And we can describe what investment is necessary for that.

Robert Peston (27:39)

And we're brilliant actually in this country at taking an integrated long term approach to transport. Aren't we?

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (27:44)

Wouldn't it be nice if we got better. So if you're thinking about what do we have to do, you've got a slight fatalist tendency in the line of questions Robert there which. No, no.

Robert Peston (27:54)

I'm just challenging you in the way

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (27:55)

of probably isn't the real. What I'm talking about here is the investments that we have to make. And it's very important to keep focusing on the investment. We have to invest another 2 or 3 percentage points of GDP. Boris Johnson back in the Karbis Bay G7 summit asked myself and my group to write a strategy paper on investing for this new form of growth which actually Boris Johnson understood quite well.

Steph McGovern (28:23)

Did it happen?

Robert Peston (28:24)

And almost none of it's happened.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (28:26)

So what I'm saying is that that making and staying with that investment case and showing what investments we have to make, showing how much they are, we should be investing another 2 or 3 percentage points of GDP. And they're wonderful investments.

Steph McGovern (28:41)

Yeah. Not that long ago we had Reid Hoffman on. He's founded LinkedIn. He's one of the kind of PayPal mafia, you know. Was originally one of Elon Musk's gang. One of the tech billionaires essentially. And his big thing was that climate change can be solved by geoengineering engineering. The things you could do to change the temperature yourself through things like putting sulfur into the air and things like that. What's your take on the idea that we can rather than talking about just reducing emissions we can actually geo engineer this.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (29:17)

Yeah. Talk about unproven technologies. That is pretty spectacularly.

Steph McGovern (29:22)

This is very rich people saying this power to do something about it.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (29:27)

I hear it Steph. And the fact that that might be able to do it individually is a very serious worry.

Steph McGovern (29:31)

Yeah.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (29:31)

You can fire muck up into the atmosphere, whatever form of muck you choose to stop the energy from the sun coming into sulfur was the example he gave. Okay. There are others but you know. Yeah, but that you can see the principle. You stop the energy coming in. That's what you do. Well we don't know what the knock on effects of that would be. It's probably correct. That's what happens when you have volcanic eruptions and. And so on. Yeah, that's that part of the story as. As substance. But what you don't know is what happens to the climate when you disrupt it in such a violent way. Average temperatures might not go up so much. But all sorts of things will happen in different parts of the world that are Quite hard to predict.

Robert Peston (30:27)

It could be like pressing on a blue. You suppress it in one place and it might shoot up somewhere else and

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (30:33)

then, for example, there might be very serious consequences equatorially. And some of our friends in Imperial College are modeling some of that. So part of the story is that it could have all sorts of peculiar effects distributed across the world, including in parts of the world which are very densely populated. Secondly, how will that affect pollution across the world? And third, of enormous importance is what happens to the oceans and the waters because they are big absorbers of carbon dioxide. And what you're going to have in the world is all that carbon dioxide there and growing whilst that heat is being stopped from coming in. But the carbon dioxide is still growing. And that could really disrupt the oceans in a dramatic way. In fact, a, you could lose, you know, the function in many ways of the oceans, including the, you know, the production of oxygen and half the oxygen.

Steph McGovern (31:28)

So a, nor to geoengineering.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (31:30)

I think we need to understand the risks and what I've said is enough to show that the understanding of the risks is of critical importance.

Steph McGovern (31:39)

Yeah.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (31:39)

Because they could be enormous risks. You might be replacing or at least postponing one aspect of a risk whilst accentuating other aspects of risk in a very powerful way. So we need, because the argument is made so much, I think we need to understand it because we are going to overshoot the 1.5 degrees and quite possibly the 2 degrees. We need to understand that argument. But my suggestion would be that we focus very hard on what the effects could be. We understand the risks associated with doing that sort of thing. And I'm fairly confident we'll come to the conclusion that it's even more risky than the path which we're following, which is, of course risky. The second thing is the governance.

Steph McGovern (32:23)

Yes.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (32:24)

Who decides? So one person can say, I don't care if you think it's risky. I don't. And then go and do it. And that is extremely dangerous. That is the megalomaniacs taking charge of our world and subjecting us to great risk. And that is deeply worrying.

Robert Peston (32:38)

That is the problem with having so many billionaires they can bleeding will do what they like. So anyway, that's a, that's a conversation for another time. Nick, as always, it's been an absolute treat talking to you. I give you my word, I'm never going to call a cable a pipe again. That was incredibly illuminating.

Steph McGovern (32:53)

Yes, Nick, thank you so much.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (32:55)

And I hope we covered more important issues in cables and pipes nomenclature.

Robert Peston (32:58)

Yeah, we certainly did. That was brilliant. No, thank you. As always.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (33:01)

Lovely to see you both and happy to come back if you want to continue.

Steph McGovern (33:05)

Well, this is. Yeah, definitely something about again.

Robert Peston (33:07)

We're definitely going to hold you to that. And that's all from the Rest is money for this week. Thank you very much.

Steph McGovern (33:11)

Bye bye.

Robert Peston (33:16)

Did Vladimir Putin interfere in the US 2016 presidential election? I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (33:24)

And I'm David McCloskey, author and former CIA analyst. And we are the hosts of the Rest Is Classified. And in our latest series, we're going deep inside the 2016 election to reveal the true story of whether the Russians helped Donald Trump take the White House.

Robert Peston (33:38)

This is the unbelievable story of how Russian spies first hacked and then leaked emails belonging to Hillary Clinton's campaign, how Julian Assange got involved with Putin's spies, and how 2016 marked the point that the world changed forever.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (33:56)

Get the full insider scoop by listening to the Rest is Classified wherever you get your podcasts.

Katie K. / Anthony Scaramucci (34:04)

Hi, guys, it's Katie K. And Anthony Scaramucci here from the Rest is Politics Us. We have just recorded a four part series that's all about Donald Trump becoming the global phenomenon we know him as today.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (34:17)

You know, Catty, I knew Donald Trump since 2005. So in this series, we rewind the clock right back and dig into the people, the events and the scandals that built him.

Katie K. / Anthony Scaramucci (34:28)

Yeah, we're going to take you from his days in military school, what he learned there, how he actually weirdly thrived there, to his father's ties to the Ku Klux Klan, his days as a business mogul in New York, and how that really shaped his worldview and his way of doing business. And we're going to explore parts of the Trump story that you might never have even heard of.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (34:47)

Not to mention Caddy, the nefarious Trump trickster, Roy Cohn.

Robert Peston (34:51)

Where's my Roy Cohn?

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (34:53)

I heard him say that so many times. I mean, I was only there for 11 days.

Robert Peston (34:56)

Caddy, where's my Roy Cohn?

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (34:59)

Well, let me tell you something. If you want to know who Roy

Robert Peston (35:01)

Cohn was, you're gonna tune into this

Katie K. / Anthony Scaramucci (35:03)

series with all the headlines that come out of Trump world every single day. We just felt there'd never really been a more important time to try to understand the America that created Donald Trump. To listen to episode one of becoming Trump hump head, over to the Rest is Politics Us wherever you get your podcast.