Charlie Duke (3:08)

of Artemis 2, Wiseman, Glover, Cook and Hansen cross the boundary to space with good com checks outstanding. Stand. We see the same and we have a beautiful moon rise. We're headed right at it. Approaching five minutes into the flight, Commander Reid Wiseman confirms he has visuals of his destination. GPS guidance, navigation and control software finishes internal checks and sends to navig channels.

Alex Ritson (3:29)

The mission will last 10 days, during which time the spacecraft Orion, which the crew are traveling in, will swing around the moon, but not land on Earth's natural satellite. The main aim is to make sure that this capsule and the new rocket which launched it can be used again, paving the way for a NASA moon landing in 2028. The US is in a race with China, which wants to land humans on the moon by 2030. For these people watching close to Cape Canaveral, there was euphoria.

Gideon Long (4:05)

To hear that rocket engines roar off from Cape Canaveral launch complex. I just have emotions running down to my spine. A female astronaut going up and it is just really incredible to see, just

Alex Ritson (4:18)

to see the diversity.

Gideon Long (4:20)

Just going up into space and even

Alex Ritson (4:21)

having someone from Canada. I drove eight hours from Carolina to

Jonathan Amos (4:26)

be here with all of you.

Barasan Etirajan (4:28)

It's such a beautiful event and this

Alex Ritson (4:31)

event can bring this beautiful country together. NASA said there'd been a temporary loss of communications after liftoff, but all was now well and the four astronauts on board were safe, secure and in great spirits.

Charlie Duke (4:45)

In.

Alex Ritson (4:46)

In the moments before takeoff, they said they were going for their families, for their teammates and for all humanity. Jonathan Amos was for many years the BBC's science correspondent. I asked him what he made of the launch.

Jonathan Amos (4:59)

Spectacular fire and fury. The noise, the light, just amazing. And we were expecting that from this rocket. I mean, it's so big, you know, it's 98 meters tall, it's full of cryogenic fuel, something like an Olympic sized swimming pool. Full two and a half million liters of liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen, then supplemented by these crazy solid fuel boosters. And it was an amazing sight watching it go up into a blue sky and it just went up and up and up and up. And eight minutes later they were in a stable orbit moving at, I don't know, 17,000 miles an hour, 27,000 kilometers an hour. I mean, the sheer power of it all. I mean, this rocket that NASA has procured produces 39 meganewtons of thrust at liftoff, which will mean absolutely nothing to you, right? But imagine you've flown on an A320, Airbus A320. Imagine 160 of them all thundering down the Runway to take you on holiday, all at full power. That is the equivalent thrust of this rocket. Yeah, it was spectacular.

Alex Ritson (6:03)

There were some issues though in the last few hours running up to the launch. Were they expected and how worried was mission control?

Jonathan Amos (6:10)

Well, any new rocket, and this is only the second time this, this type of rocket has launched, any new rocket can be a bit finickety. This design as well has proven to be very finickety. It's had leaks and all sorts going on and we were all quite surprised, I think, that it went through the fueling process without any issue at all. And then one or two sensors started playing up and we thought, oh dear, are we going to be held, Are we going to miss today and have to come back tomorrow? There was one extraordinary moment where they had an issue with the flight termination system. This is a system that blows the rocket up. If it veers off course, they've got a system to take the astronauts off the top before that happens. But if the rocket veers off course, they have to destroy it in case it comes down on a populated area. And the piece of equipment that they needed to check this issue was an old piece of shuttle hardware, space shuttle hardware, and somebody had to run off and get this piece of hardware from a building behind the launch control center to check that everything was all right. And it was all right and the count proceeded.

Alex Ritson (7:12)

So when can we expect Orion to reach the moon? And presumably we're going to see some extraordinary footage.

Jonathan Amos (7:19)

Yeah, you're right. We've now got 4K video cameras and we can stream all of that back. They'll be back on the 10th, let's call it a 10 day mission. So, you know, within about sort of four or five days they'll be getting very close to the moon. They'll go around the back, they'll see the far side, they'll see places that no human eyes have ever seen before. And so there's about 60% of the backside of the moon that has never been seen by human eyes. For sure, we've had robot spacecraft taking pictures of the backside of the moon, but human eyes have never, have never seen it and you know, they'll enjoy that and then they'll gently swing back to Earth and we'll see them on the 10th.

Alex Ritson (7:55)

It's a lovely thing to do, it's terribly exciting, but what's the point of it?

Jonathan Amos (7:58)

Been there, done that, got the T shirt right. Yeah, 50 years ago. I'm 62. I can just remember the latter stages of Apollo as a very small boy. But I'm not the Apollo generation. Every new generation needs its own narrative. We're making that narrative now, and it's a different one to the Apollo one, because back then it was all about footprints and flags. Now it's about settling further out into space, taking the human species beyond, not just the moon, but to Mars and maybe even deeper into space. And Artemis is trying to set up that trajectory, right? It's trying to do it in a sustainable way so that we go to the moon and we stay there, build a moon base, build the technology then to go to Mars. You know, who knows, have cities on Mars one day. You know, we've been to the moon before, but there's newer things and better things that we can be doing if we get this program right.

Alex Ritson (8:54)

Jonathan Amos now to the war with Iran. President Trump has given a televised address to justify his decision to start the conflict. During the course of the fighting, Mr. Trump has on many occasions confusingly suggested the war was nearing its end before going on to say it could last for some time. He did that again on Wednesday, firstly saying it was nearly completed.

Charlie Duke (9:19)

I've made clear from the beginning of Operation Epic Fury that we will continue until our objectives are fully achieved. Thanks to the progress we've made, I can say tonight that we are on track to complete all of America's military objectives shortly, very shortly.

Alex Ritson (9:35)

But immediately afterwards, the president threatened to escalate the conflict if during this period

Charlie Duke (9:41)

of time, no deal is made. We have our eyes on key targets. If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously. We have not hit their oil, even though that's the easiest target of all, because it would not give them even a small chance of survival or rebuilding. But we could hit it and it would be gone, and there's not a thing they could do about it.

Alex Ritson (10:10)

Our correspondent in Washington, Simi Jolla Osho, listened to the address. What did she make of it?

Lori Schott (10:17)

It's kind of what we expected him to talk about, basically to tout the US Military efforts in Iran, to talk about the objectives that the administration has in this war, which is degrading Iran's military, degrading their nuclear capabilities, as well as dest relationships with their proxies, and then spoke about how the US Isn't dependent on the Strait of Hormuz, and urged other countries to take it. He said to take it and to cherish it, or to buy oil from the US and then he spoke about the state of the US saying that it was a dead and crippled country, but now it's the hottest country in the world. And then he said there's no inflation and that the US Is experiencing its highest stock market ever. But I think that's something that a lot of the public will disagree with, especially with the increase in gas prices. This could have been an opportunity for President Trump to speak to the American public who are feeling the increase in gas prices, who are kind of wary of this war and wondering when it would end. And it doesn't feel like he truly did that, truly gave an idea of what victory would be and when this war would end. I thought it was interesting how he compared the timeline of this war to the Korean War, the war with Iraq, saying this is only 32 days and calling this war a little journey to Iran. So it feels like he's basically saying, look, things are going to continue. The US has yet to achieve all its military objectives in Iran unless a deal is reached and kind of just wait and see what happens. And I don't think that's what people would have wanted from this address.

Alex Ritson (12:01)

Yeah, this address was heavily telegraphed. Was there anything in this that we didn't know already?

Lori Schott (12:08)

No, that's the short answer. No, not at all. It feels like a sort of repeat from what we've been hearing from President Trump and members of his cabinet for the last few weeks. Boasting about the US Military destroying Iran's navy and killing their leaders, trying to justify this war by going on about the core objectives of the war and saying how Iran was close to building a nuclear weapon, close to building a huge stockpile of missiles that could have soon reached, he said, anywhere on earth. It doesn't feel like we've learned anything new. This is what we've been hearing for the past two weeks.

Alex Ritson (12:46)

Simi Jolosho in Washington to China, where an incident involving robo taxis has sparked debate about the safety of driverless vehicles. On Tuesday, about 100 self driving Apollo Go taxis suddenly stopped where they were in the road in the city of Wuhan following what's thought to be a system malfunction. Police said there'd been no reports of injuries, although one video on social media appeared to show at least one collision. The taxis are owned by Chinese firm Baidu. James Menendez spoke to Jack Stilgo, professor of science and Technology policy at University College London. He gave his take on the incident.

James Menendez (13:26)

The first thing to say is that we don't know exactly what's gone on here. And whenever a technology like this goes wrong, there is a real need for these incidents to be investigated and done so in a trial, transparent way. And I think incidents like this show you quite how dependent the technologies are on a sort of behind the scenes infrastructure, a sort of support network that keeps the whole thing functioning. And when that goes down, we see moments like this.

Alex Ritson (13:56)

Is it your best guess that this was some kind of software failure then?

James Menendez (13:59)

I think it's impossible to say. It could have been a connectivity failure, it could have been a software failure, a bug in the system, it could have been a failure of the power system that supports the whole fleet. But what it tells you is that the connectivity between these vehicles and the base back home matters.

Jonathan Amos (14:19)

Yes.

Alex Ritson (14:20)

And you mentioned the word transparency at the beginning.

James Menendez (14:23)

Will we ever know what went wrong here? We can first of all recognise that there are all sorts of competitive pressures with all of these companies that might lead to them being a bit cagey about what's going on. Right. They want to preserve the magic. They want to give the impression that there's some sort of magical AI driving the cars. There have been lots of examples of where companies haven't been totally forthcoming about how the cars really work, so how much they depend on people behind the scenes able to take control if things go wrong. And. And I think it's the job of regulators to demand more from those companies, to say, actually tell us more about how these things work so that we can work out what the risks really are. And then when they go wrong, we need to understand exactly how they went wrong. I think there is a temptation to compare the technology of a computer driven car to a conventional human driven car. And I think if we do that, there might be a trap in that we'll miss the new possible risks presented with this technology. There might be other either cyber security risks or risks that come from these technologies being decked in dozens of cameras. They are sort of CCTV on wheels, which does raise some serious privacy risks as well.

Alex Ritson (15:40)

Jack Stilgoe speaking to James Menendez. Still to come in this podcast, there

Barasan Etirajan (15:47)

were fears that if they were forced to send these papers, the diaries, back to China, like what happened to other documents, like in the Foreign Ministry documents in China, 90% of them vanished.

Alex Ritson (15:59)

A US court rules Stanford University can keep the controversial diaries of the secretary to former Chinese leader Chairman Mao.

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Alex Ritson (18:42)

This is the global news podcast President Trump has ignited debate around whether someone born in the United States should automatically become an American citizen. On his first day back in the White House last year, he signed an executive order banning birthright citizenship for children born to parents in the US Illegally or on temporary visas. It was a key part of his tough new immigration policy, but was immediately challenged as a violation of the U.S. constitution. The U.S. supreme Court has begun hearing legal arguments in the case. While Mr. Trump was sitting in the audience, Oliver Conway spoke to our Washington correspondent Ione Wells. She was outside the court and took us through the case.

Gideon Long (19:26)

The Trump administration argue that despite this having been in the Constitution for hundreds of years, they feel that the this has been interpreted incorrectly, that this was put in the Constitution essentially to protect, for example, the the children of people who had been formerly enslaved. They argue that it doesn't say explicitly in the Constitution that this should apply to people who came to the US Illegally or who are here temporarily. They feel that in order to be eligible, people should prove that their parents are domiciled here at the moment and that they have what the lawyer described as allegiance to the United States States. Now, interestingly, that was something which some of the judges picked up on, questioning whether allegiance is really something that comes with permanent residents, and questioning whether it was fair to suggest that undocumented migrants or those who may be here on a more temporary basis couldn't still have that kind of allegiance.

Alex Ritson (20:14)

Yeah, interesting that some of the conservative justices seemed skeptical, but what are the overall counter arguments?

Gideon Long (20:20)

Yeah, that's right. One conservative justice even picked up on this point about slavery and said that some of those who came to the United States as slaves came at a time when it wasn't legal for slavery to exist. Outside the court, though, I spoke to many people who were in a big crowd of protesters. A lot of them were concerned about what this would mean for people, given that many of them were first, second, third generation immigrants, and said that the point of the Constitution is to ingrain these rights, arguing that Donald Trump didn't have the authority to just rip that up without a robust procedure through Congress.

Lori Schott (20:53)

I think it would create two different classes of citizens. I feel really scared about what that might mean for children in the future.

Gideon Long (21:03)

This particular case attacks the very Constitution itself, and it is so completely illegal that if the Supreme Court finds this

Charlie Duke (21:15)

not part of the Constitution. Constitution, they're effectively saying that the Constitution is unconstitutional.

Alex Ritson (21:21)

My grandfather's a birthright citizen. My mother was able to immigrate to the United States because of my grandfather. The only reason that I was able to serve in the United States Air Force was because of my grandfather. That diversity, that's what makes America what it is. Now, Ione President Trump has already lost one major case at the Supreme Court this year. How important is this one?

Gideon Long (21:41)

Well, it is important because he's made it a really flagship part of his immigration policy. He posted on Truth Social after we heard the oral arguments lashing out, essentially saying that the United States is stupid to allow birthright citizenship. So for him, this is a really important part of reducing immigration in the United States.

Alex Ritson (22:00)

Ione Wells A week has passed since Meta and Google lost their court battle in Los Angeles against a young woman who claimed they had harmed her mental health with their social media platforms. She argued they had failed to protect her from becoming addicted. Gideon Long asks if social media companies will now change.

Charlie Duke (22:20)

This is a landmark moment. It will reverberate. I tell you this, if the jury had returned to no, the champagne corks would be popping in the boardrooms of

Oliver Conway (22:31)

Google and Meta Lawyer Mark Lanier talking outside the courthouse following last week's verdict in the case involving Kaylee, a 20 year old woman, and Meta and Google. It's been described as a tobacco moment for Big Tech, similar to when cigarette companies were forced to acknowledge their product products were harmful. Meta and Google deny the accusations against them and have said they will appeal. The court case dealt specifically with Caylee, who said that she became addicted to social media platforms as a child and that it seriously impacted her mental health. But hers is just one case and it's still not clear that social media impacts all young people negatively or that the negatives aren't outweighed by positives after all. Some young people say social media platforms help them find like minded souls online or discover communities where they belong. Victoria Goodyear is a professor of physical activity, health and well being at the University of Birmingham in the uk.

Gideon Long (23:27)

It's not clear cut, so we don't have a consistent pattern in the evidence

Lori Schott (23:31)

that basically says that it causes harm

Gideon Long (23:33)

or it promotes benefits at a population level. The evidence doesn't support that there is definite or definitive harm. But individual level cases, there is some

Lori Schott (23:43)

evidence and the challenge is if we

Gideon Long (23:45)

wait for better evidence, this could also cause harm. So it's a real challenge for decision

Oliver Conway (23:50)

makers and we've seen countries around the world, starting with Australia, but many other countries are now following suit saying that they are going to ban social media platforms for young people. Blanket bans of some of these apps. Do you think the evidence is there to support that kind of policy?

Gideon Long (24:05)

Not yet. I don't think the evidence is there yet.

Oliver Conway (24:08)

If blanket bans aren't the answer, then what is? Clara Chappaz is France's Ambassador for tech and Artificial intelligence. She's working closely with President Emmanuel Macron on implementing a French social media ban for under 15s, but also on encouraging companies to make practical changes to their platforms.

Gideon Long (24:26)

The European Commission has started an inquiry on TikTok Infinite scroll, saying that this fails to protect minors. As a result of that, TikTok is acting and changing their functionalities. So each company needs to go and assess what are the risks that I'm causing to underage kids and what are

Oliver Conway (24:43)

the specific reforms and regulations that you think are needed to bring Big Tech into line.

Gideon Long (24:49)

Well, I think the first thing is the below 15 ban. Why? Because that gives everyone, families, children, themselves, teachers, a simple rule whereby they can say, okay, I know this product is bad for a kid under a certain age. And then, I mean, there's a ton of things that also need to change. And if everyone pushes in the same direction, we can make the Internet a safe space for children.

Oliver Conway (25:13)

With thousands of cases against Big Tech already filed in US courts and at least 30 countries considering bans on social media for teenagers like Australia's, it does seem that change is coming. And parents say they're willing to work with tech companies. Lori Shot's 18 year old daughter Annalee took her own life in 2020. And Lori blames social media for making her daughter feel inadequate about the way she looked. When the verdict came out in Caylee's case, Laurie was outside the court and had this message for everyone involved.

Gideon Long (25:44)

Let's fix it.

Lori Schott (25:45)

Big Tech, us, let's make this world a better place.

Gideon Long (25:49)

But parents, we need you to join

Lori Schott (25:50)

in with us because it stops today.

Gideon Long (25:53)

Big Tech, your gig is over. Yep,

Alex Ritson (25:58)

Parent Laurie Schott ending that report by Gideon Long. One of the most important insider accounts of elite politics in modern China, including details of the Tiananmen Square massacre, comes from a series of diaries written by a former senior official called Li Ray, who was once Mao Zedong's secretary. The diaries were donated to Stanford University in the United States. Following legal arguments in a US Court, a judge has now ruled it can keep them. Our global affairs reporter and Barasan Etirajan told us more about Li Ray and his diaries.

Barasan Etirajan (26:36)

He was a top official from the Chinese Communist Party. He was also a critic. He was more of a reformist. At one point, he became a personal secretary to Chairman Mao. So, you know, if you can reach that level, you can as well imagine his growing influence in the party. What he did was he was meticulously noting down what was happening around him about his meetings, what was happening within the Communist Party. He was a firsthand witness to what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989 because he was standing in a balcony and he was writing down what he saw. What he was explaining was how the soldiers were firing in the air, on the ground. I mean, this is one event, you know, which shook China. And no one in China now wants to talk about it because it is kind of a taboo subject where thousands of people were killed. So he was an eyewitness account. And that's why he was one of those who wanted to bring in more reforms into the Chinese Communist Party. So his diaries proved valuable insight into what was happening in China at that time.

Alex Ritson (27:41)

How did they come to be in the US and tell us about this court case, the dispute over who should actually have them?

Barasan Etirajan (27:48)

According to his daughter, Li Nanyang, he wanted these documents, his diaries and notes should be donated to somebody. He was always worried that all his accounts would be taken out, redacted, or completely disappeared from any of the archives. So his daughter, she began donating his papers to Stanford in 2014 when he was still alive. But he didn't leave any will or note giving her the full authority after he died. Is Li Rui's second wife, Zhang Yushen. She filed a lawsuit against Li Nanyang, the stepdaughter in China, saying these diaries consist of some personal, intimate accounts between them. So she wanted those papers to be brought back and she filed this case in China and the court ruled in her favor. So that's when the Stanford University filed this lawsuit in California. Now this ruling affirms that they are the rightful owners of this document. There were fears that if they were forced to send these papers, the diaries, back to China, like what happened to other documents, like in the Foreign Ministry documents in China, 90% of them vanished because China doesn't want any of the records during the Cultural Revolution or the Great Leap Forward to come to light because of what happened during that time. So because these documents were given by Li Rui's daughter and they wanted to have, have some legal sanctity saying they are the rightful owners of these documents.

Alex Ritson (29:17)

And Barasan Etirajan speaking to Oliver Conway. Back to our top story. The Artemis mission. Its crew will circle the moon rather than land on it. The BBC has spoken to one of the four astronauts still alive who have walked on the moon. 90 year old Charlie Duke was part of the Apollo 16 moon mission. On April 21, 1972, he became the youngest man to walk on the moon, a title he still holds. Jamie Kumarasamy asked Charlie if he could recall how he was feeling just before liftoff.

Charlie Duke (29:52)

We were getting suited up and very excited. And then we got out to the launch pad and got in the spacecraft and strapped in, lay there, ready to go. And what we were thinking about was, we're going to be on our way. Keep counting, keep counting, keep counting. Let's go scrub this. And you said, and you didn't, we didn't.

Alex Ritson (30:17)

And what sort of conversations that you had, I mean, with your family just before, before then. Because, I mean, sometimes, you know, those must have been quite Poignant, Quite tricky, perhaps.

Charlie Duke (30:29)

Well, we were in quarantine, as they've been, and we could only see our spouses. My kids could come, but they had to talk to me through a window. And so we had a short visit with the boys. They were very young at the time, 5 and 7, so they don't remember very much. But Dottie and I had some very poignant conversations and we were both very excited about it. I had my twin brother and my mom and dad and her mom and dad. We got half of South Carolina showed up for the launch. So it was exciting, really. We were so excited to get going.

Alex Ritson (31:20)

And then off you went. And I mean, what do you recall of the journey?

Charlie Duke (31:24)

First of all, the liftoff got your attention. You had seven and a half million pounds, was pushing six and a half million, and the rocket was shaking like crazy from side to side. And I didn't remember anybody telling us supposed to shake that hard. So I got a little nervous. Later on, I found out my heartbeat was way up, like 140. And John Young, the commander on the left side, his was 70, so he was the cool one. And I was excited, but ready to do my job if we had an emergency.

Alex Ritson (31:57)

And.

Charlie Duke (31:58)

But things went really smoothly as we lifted off right on the second.

Alex Ritson (32:02)

So you are on the moon.

James Menendez (32:04)

You step on the moon.

Alex Ritson (32:05)

What is that experience like? There aren't many people I can ask that to, and you're one of the few.

Charlie Duke (32:10)

Well, it was a tremendous feeling of satisfaction. I felt right at home. We recognized the landing area from when we stepped out. You could see the main objective to the south was Stone Mountain. On the other side, on the north side was the Smoky Mountains, we called them. We were really going up a hill, I'll tell you. What a view, isn't it, John? It's absolutely unreal. I have never seen. All I can say is spectacular, and I know y' all are sick of that word. And so we knew where we were and we recognized the craters as the main craters as we came in. And the surprise was there were a lot more craters than we expected because of our photographs only had 40ft resolution. So we didn't see the smaller craters till we got close.

Alex Ritson (33:00)

Charlie Duke, one of the last surviving astronauts to walk on the Moon. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us@globalpodcastbc.co.uk. you can also find us on X@BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global Global Newspod. And don't forget our sister podcast, A Global Story, which goes in depth and beyond the headlines on one big story. This edition of the Global News Podcast was mixed by Holly Smith and the producer was Daniel Mann. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritson. Until next time. Goodbye.

Lori Schott (33:51)

Support is available 247 with VRBoCare. We're here day or night, ready whenever

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