Global News Podcast - Trump says US strikes set Iran's nuclear programme back 'decades'

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

President Trump dismisses leaked intelligence report that cast doubt on success of Iran strikes. Also: millions of children at risk as vaccine uptake stalls and could weight loss drugs be changing our... shopping habits?

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 13 Hours GMT on Wednesday 25th June. President Trump insists the US has wiped out Iran's nuclear threat, despite a Pentagon report suggesting the damage was limited. Why global vaccination rates in children have stalled or even gone backwards? And could weight loss drugs be changing our shopping habits? Also in this podcast, New York Democrats look left, backing a 33-year-old Muslim socialist as their candidate for mayor.
Starting point is 00:00:37 And... Enigma cursor is a two-legged dinosaur, a herbivore, and it has very long limbs and big feet, so it was probably quite a fast runner. The newly identified dinosaur the size of a dog. What next for Israel and Iran? The US-backed ceasefire, which got off to a shaky start yesterday, appears to be holding. But there are plenty of issues which remain unresolved, not least the future of the Iranian nuclear programme.
Starting point is 00:01:08 Israel insists the threat has been removed. But a leaked Pentagon assessment suggests the American raid may not have wiped out Iran's ability to enrich uranium. President Trump dismissed the reporters' fake news and once again praised the weekend attack. That was a perfect operation. And this was done from 52,000 feet. There was no moon, there was no light. Those three holes are right together.
Starting point is 00:01:32 Also and nobody talks about this, we shot 30 tomahawks from submarines, in particular one submarine but that was 400 miles away. And every one of those tomahawks hit within a foot of where they were supposed to hit took out a lot of buildings that Israel wasn't able to get we took them out with Tomahawks this was a devastating attack and it knocked them for a loop. Do you think the Iranian nuclear program has been put back by these strikes? I think basically decades because I don't think they'll ever do it again. So how reliable is the Pentagon assessment? I think basically decades because I don't think they'll ever do it again.
Starting point is 00:02:05 So how reliable is the Pentagon assessment? Emma Barnett put that question to Mick Mulroy, a former Pentagon official in the first Trump administration. There's really two issues here. One is the intelligence correct? Is what the White House is saying overstated? People want to know. Obviously, the whole purpose of doing this really complex military operation was to destroy Iran's capacity to build a nuclear weapon.
Starting point is 00:02:29 And the assessments all before this had it at about two years setback. If you look from the intelligence side, how was the intelligence community so wrong to say if you struck these facilities, it would be years and now it's months. So they obviously had something wrong before or something wrong now. It can't be both. The other question is, is this based on just limited intelligence? Normally battle damage assessments, which is the BDA term that everybody's hearing now, takes place over time because you have to collect human intelligence, imagery intelligence, signals intelligence, and it changes as you get more information. And then there's just a common sense view of how much of a setback this would be.
Starting point is 00:03:09 You drop 12,000, 30,000 pound bombs on a facility and you're telling the average person it's only going to take a few months to repair at the same time that we all know Israel's not going to let them repair it. So I think people need to ask what is the basis of this assessment and how do we ensure that this is actually accurate. How damaging is this leak? Well, that's the other part. So if it's leaked, if people don't have trust that are providing information that the information would be protected, they'll stop providing information. They have to worry about their own safety. A lot of human sources can get killed. If they're compromised, you can deduce based on the information that's leaked sometimes about who
Starting point is 00:03:51 would have had placement and access to leak that information. And then you can narrow it down if you're Iranian counterintelligence. So there's a lot of issues. I don't do politics, but there's a political issue. The White House is using the term obliterated. The report apparently is much less confident in not only how much was destroyed, but also how much this would set back the program. Now if the reason why they're making this assessment, and I don't know, is they moved the Enriched uranium and the centrifuges out or some of them, then that matters because the facility could still be destroyed, which was what the objective is of the strikes itself. But unfortunately, it doesn't matter if the material that you
Starting point is 00:04:31 wanted to assure was destroyed was moved out before. So there's so many questions, I don't know the answers, but that's what Congress and the committees that are relevant should be asking. And just in terms of looking ahead now, with this sort of leak and this concern that the strikes by America were not as successful as had been hoped and has been claimed, what does that mean? Do you think about whether America is finished with this? The objective, I think, remains the same.
Starting point is 00:04:59 And it has been the objective of every administration. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. You have to have some force to back that up. If you don't have any force to back that up, it's essentially empty rhetoric. It doesn't mean we use military force all the time. It should be limited and it should essentially support diplomacy. Diplomacy should always lead. But if you don't have a viable forcing function like the US military, then diplomacy can only take you so far. You can use economic pressure sanctions that I think is effective to a limited extent,
Starting point is 00:05:30 but it doesn't actually change their actions entirely. So this might be something that continues if Iran tries to rebuild the sites at Natanz, Fordow, Istafan, and there's others, or they try to build a new one that's discovered by intelligence. There could be additional strikes to essentially ensure that they never get to a place where they have a nuclear weapon. Former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for the Middle East, Mick Mulroy. A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry has told Al Jazeera that the country's nuclear facilities were badly damaged by the American strikes but didn't give any
Starting point is 00:06:05 details. Iran says more than 600 people were killed during the 12-day conflict. Internet services are being restored and comments both supporting and criticizing the government are being posted on social media. But as Iranians take stock many fear the authorities will try to reassert control by cracking down on perceived dissent. What scares me more than war or ceasefire is a wounded regime. It failed to defeat Israel or the US. Now it will turn on its own people, increasing executions. That means the regime will now start arresting young people over their social media posts.
Starting point is 00:06:48 Parham Gobadi from the BBC Persian service told me more about the atmosphere in Iran right now. Today morning they woke up to the news of executions. Three men were executed in Iran. Over 700 people were arrested on charges of espionage. And that shows that probably these arrests are arbitrary because how can you find 700 people in a matter of few days? And I was watching the Iranian state TV, they lined up six men who they said they are Israeli Mossad spies.
Starting point is 00:07:20 And one of them said that, yeah, I'm a delivery motorcycle driver. And he said, so what did you do? It was like, yeah, I'm a delivery motorcycle driver and he said so what did you do? It was like yeah I was spying for Mosul. We don't know under what conditions these confessions are made. It might have been under duress or not but the fact is that even Iranian authorities have acknowledged that one of the biggest blows they've had was because of the Israeli infiltration into the system but that can't be a motorcycle driver because there were
Starting point is 00:07:44 so many top Iranian commanders who were assassinated in the past few days. So many nuclear scientists that were assassinated. This shows that whatever spies they have in the country or collaborators, they are at very high level that they know the location of these top commanders that should be a secret. On the streets of Tehran right now, you see a lot of checkpoints, so they have restored checkpoints and people are not used to it anymore. We had it back in the 80s, so there's a feeling of fear among people, confusion, shock and uncertainty. Following the killing of all those generals and security leaders, how difficult will it be for Iran to rebuild
Starting point is 00:08:23 its military command? Well, they're claiming victory right now. Like Israelis, they're saying that we won this war because we managed to inflict some harm to them. But in reality, they know that they've been humiliated. And that's one thing that Iranians fear the most because whenever the Iranian regime feels humiliated, their critics say that it takes revenge on its own people to restore its strength and keep its face and to probably prevent public disorder in order to show people that you cannot protest right now, you cannot get on the
Starting point is 00:08:55 street. I'm still strong, I'm still the one that is leading the police. And what of the nuclear program? Today Iranian parliament passed a bill that Iran should suspend its cooperation, collaboration with the International Atomic Energy, IAEA. But at the end of the day, the buck stops with the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. That might only be used as a bargaining chip for Iran, but it's too early to judge. I think we need to wait and see.
Starting point is 00:09:22 But what the Iranian authorities are saying is that they might leave NPT, non-polar refration nuclear treaty, and also stop collaboration with IAEA, which is going to pave the path for them in the future if they want to make a nuclear bomb, which is a really risky process. Baham Gabbadi of the BBC Persian Service. Other news now and a new study suggests that progress in vaccinating children against a number of life-threatening diseases has stalled or even gone backwards in the past two decades. The findings published in The Lancet show that measles vaccinations have declined in nearly half the world's countries. Lead author Jonathan Moser says he remains optimistic. We know that this is one of the most tremendous, effective and cost-effective public health
Starting point is 00:10:06 interventions in history. And we've seen the ways in which it can transform communities and it can transform public and global health. And I think that we as a global community, despite all these challenges, can rise to the occasion and take advantage of the opportunity that we have in the coming decades to really transform global health through providing immunisation to all. Anna Foster found out more about the findings from our health correspondent Dominic Hughes. The context of this is what has been a huge public health success really in that since 1974 more than four billion children have been vaccinated. It's estimated 150 million deaths
Starting point is 00:10:40 have been prevented worldwide and in nearly half a century, up to 2023, researchers say vaccine coverage has doubled. But if you zoom in on the last couple of decades, progress has been really unequal. And since 2010, it's actually stagnated. So there's now this really wide variation in vaccine coverage. One good example of how things have gone backwards
Starting point is 00:11:04 is measles vaccinations. This Lancet study says measles vaccinations declined in 100 out of 204 countries. Interestingly, that's often in European countries, in the US, many wealthier countries. But then we also have the COVID-19 pandemic, which really made things much worse by its impact on primary care systems. So by 2023, there were nearly 16 million children who'd not had any
Starting point is 00:11:34 childhood vaccinations at all. Most of them were in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. And then things like conflicts, civil wars, natural disasters, they all also take a huge toll on these primary care systems, which are the main way that these vaccines are delivered. So that's how we've ended up where we've ended up. And of course you have things like vaccine hesitancy and also cuts to foreign aid budgets in countries like the UK, the US. Often they are the ones aren't they who deliver and distribute vaccines. And just from a technical point of view, it is one of those things where it is better
Starting point is 00:12:10 that the whole world is vaccinated. You can't just look at one country and say, well, this country is all right, because that's not quite how diseases work. No, absolutely. And that's that's the key. That's one of the key points that the researchers behind this paper in the Lancet make is that vaccines are a way of protecting all of us from the spread of diseases like tuberculosis, measles, polio, but also whooping cough, rubella, mumps, all these preventable, largely preventable, childhood diseases that can claim many, many lives. So they're saying you need better primary care systems, they need governments to work with organisations like the World Health Organisation but also principally the Vaccine Alliance, GAVI, who are in the
Starting point is 00:12:49 process of trying to secure their next round of funding for the next five years. They want a much more concerted effort to provide better, more equal access to vaccines but they also suggest as you mentioned this misinformation to help those parents who might be hesitant about getting their own children vaccinated. Our health correspondent Dominic Hughes. Could weight loss drugs be changing our shopping habits? Well the latest figures here in the UK from research firm Cantar show the first fall in supermarket sales this year as well as a drop in purchases of fast food. It's not significant enough yet to draw conclusions but some analysts are attributing it to shoppers cutting back on high sugar
Starting point is 00:13:30 snacks and processed foods. So what's going on? Sean Farrington is the BBC's business presenter. Can't I look in depth at what we buy from supermarkets and what supermarkets are offering? And so when they've done their latest analysis and looking at the price of all this stuff as well, they've seen that they actually sold fewer things, not just spending less, but they sold fewer items in supermarkets in the last month. And when they then drill down and look at what some of those products might be, they're starting to maybe suggest that the trend that we've definitely heard about globally, some of the massive treat conglomerates
Starting point is 00:14:05 have definitely had to adjust how they are producing products, the size of the products that they're selling, particularly in the United States, the impact of some of these weight loss jabs has had. And so it ties in and they will see that the products are of a similar nature. There'll be adjustments in all ways. But when we first started to see these jabs being talked about, investors straight away were saying, if this carries on like this, this is going to have a major impact. Sean Farrington. A newly identified dinosaur the size of a dog has been named by scientists.
Starting point is 00:14:34 When it was first found, it was wrongly classified as a Nanosaurus. But experts say it's actually a different species altogether. It'll be the first new dinosaur to go on show at the Natural History Museum in London for more than a decade. It's been given the name Enigma cursa, meaning puzzling runner. Our science correspondent Georgina Rannard has been to see it. We're putting some of the tail vertebrae onto this dinosaur. Conservatives are holding the delicate black bones of a dinosaur that was no taller than a Labrador dog. It has tail bones like shiny pebbles and a small head the length of my palm.
Starting point is 00:15:13 It will be the first new dinosaur to go on display in the museum since 2014. I'm stood here in the Natural History Museum's earth hall with Sophie the stegosaurus, a huge dinosaur looming above me and all the visitors here today. And above us on a balcony there's a black screen and just visible are the museum's conservation team painstakingly assembling the pieces of the newly named dinosaur Enigma cursor inside a glass display case. It's a huge honour for one of the world's smallest dinosaurs. When the museum was donated this specimen, it was called Nanosaurus, like countless other small dinosaurs. What we're looking for, we're comparing it to other specimens and saying, well, how the proportion is different, how are the shapes different. Paleontologist Susanna Maidman compared the dinosaur with other dinosaur specimens and
Starting point is 00:16:07 realised they were different. All of this is the hind limb. All of these nobbles and bobbles are massive attachments. It's features like that that allow us to look at it and say this is something new and novel. It was a case of mistaken identity. Now the dinosaur has been named a new species, Enigma cursa, meaning puzzling runner. Enigma cursa is a two-legged dinosaur, it was a herbivore, and probably used its four limbs to pull food towards its mouth. And it has very long limbs and big feet, so it was probably quite a fast runner. It lived in the Morrison Formation 150 million years ago in the late Jurassic period,
Starting point is 00:16:44 running around the feet of larger dinosaurs like the Stegosaurus. It's very rare to have such a complete example of an early small dinosaur. When we think of dinosaurs, we tend to think of giant, famous dinosaurs like Diplodocus or Tyrannosaurus rex. Professor Paul Barrett from the Natural History Museum. But these are only a small part of the overall diversity of dinosaurs as a group. But when we take them all together, we can get a much better idea of how those ecosystems functioned, how they worked, how the group as a whole evolved, and the factors that led to them diversifying in such a wide range of forms, and also potentially giving us some
Starting point is 00:17:16 clues into why some of those groups became extinct. Professor Paul Barrett ending that report by Georgina Rannard. Still to come on the Global News podcast. First question is, were you aware of F1, have you ever been to a race, one hand went up. After the movie we said, are any of you interested in F1 or seeing a race, every hand went up. The producer of a new film about Formula One racing says it's not just for super fans. While the Israeli military has been focused on attacking Iran for much of the past two weeks, reports of Palestinians being killed while trying to get aid in Gaza have continued almost daily.
Starting point is 00:18:05 Nearly a month after the Israeli and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began operating, the UN says at least 410 people have been killed by the Israeli military while trying to get aid. The UN's children's agency UNICEF has once again spoken out against the aid distribution system. Its spokesman, James James Elder has just come back from Gaza. He told Rajini Vaidyanathan about conditions on the ground. Catastrophic, worse than ever. It's so hard to articulate to people that they keep getting
Starting point is 00:18:34 worse. But two things struck me here. The obvious one is of course people's coping capacity has been smashed with relentless bombardment, consistent denials of humanitarian aid and the only thing for long long period getting in is bombs. Two more things struck me here. One is water. We are now looking at a man-made drought. If fuel which supplies and distributes water across the Gaza Strip is not allowed in, then we start to see children dying of thirst and we're talking about a couple of weeks.
Starting point is 00:19:02 Fuel has not been allowed in for a hundred days. This is not logistical, this is political. This is entirely manmade and it's fixed very quickly. The other thing, I've spent too much time in hospitals, too much time seeing little girls and boys with these horrendous wounds of war because the bombardments have not stopped. We're talking now 50,000 girls and boys
Starting point is 00:19:21 either killed or wounded. The difference this time is I didn't just see those children, I heard them. It's a sense of hearing the screams of little girls and boys either killed or wounded. The difference this time is I didn't just see those children, I heard them. It's a sense of hearing the screams of little girls and boys because of a sheer lack of painkillers as doctors and nurses try to treat amputations or shrapnel or gunshot wounds. I met a little boy, a 13 year old boy who got money given by his father to go and buy bread. That's all the family had. He saw people going to one of these sites. This is my chance. I'm not going to go and buy bread. That's all the family had. He saw people going to one of these sites. This is my chance. I'm not going to see my mum starve.
Starting point is 00:19:48 I'm going to bring it back a box of food. Chaos ensued, firing. He got hit with shrapnel from a tank shell. When I met him in hospital, he had injuries to his pancreas, to his stomach, bravest little boy, just wanted to sit up with me while we tried to tell his story to get a medical evacuation. After two weeks on the day I left Gaza, he died. That little Abdul Al-Rahman, 13 years old, died of those wounds. He died while
Starting point is 00:20:10 trying to get food for his family. This is not an isolated incident. It's hard to hear stories like that, isn't it James? We talked so many times after you've been in and out of Gaza. What is your message to world leaders about what desperately needs to be done? It's really simple. It's the application of international humanitarian law. It's allowing aid agencies to flood the Gaza Strip with humanitarian aid.
Starting point is 00:20:35 It's stopping indiscriminate attacks. The sad thing is, Regine, that Palestinians have said to me, we understand that international humanitarian law doesn't apply to us. You know, I had a fourth year English literature graduate student say, James, it's so humiliating to starve. A medical student say, it's dangerous to dream. This cannot become a norm for Palestinians who seem more aware of some international humanitarian law than those who are meant to implement it.
Starting point is 00:21:03 UNICEF spokesman James Elder. Well Israel's army has said it will review all incidents of Palestinians being killed or wounded near aid distribution sites in Gaza. But it has also said it is redoubling its campaign to crush Hamas. It said today that seven of its soldiers were killed in an attack on their armoured vehicle in the southern city of Karnunis on Tuesday. It's one of the deadliest incidents for Israeli forces in the more than 20-month war. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a difficult day for the people of Israel. Our heroic fighters
Starting point is 00:21:36 fell in a battle to defeat Hamas and release our hostages, the words of the Israeli Prime Minister. Despite being an established democratic stronghold, New York was one of many so-called blue states that saw an increase in Republican support in last year's US presidential election. But could yesterday's Democratic primary, in the race to become mayor of New York City, point to the future direction of the Democrats more broadly? With 95% of ballots counted, a young socialist candidate Zohran Mandani is the clear front-runner. His main rival, the former New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, has
Starting point is 00:22:13 already admitted defeat. Chantal Hartle has this report. A year ago Zohran Mandani was relatively unknown in political circles in New York but the 33 yearold Muslim socialist is now poised to win the Democratic nomination to become the city's next mayor. More than a million voters threw their support behind him in the first round of the primary on Tuesday. Declaring victory in the borough of Queens, which he represents, Mandani told hundreds of supporters, tonight we made history. We have won because New Yorkers have stood up for a city they can afford. A city where they can do more than just struggle.
Starting point is 00:22:56 And it's where the mayor will use their power to reject Donald Trump's fascism. If elected, when voters head to the polls in November, Mandani would be the city's first Muslim and Indian mayor. In recent weeks, he's become massively popular, especially among younger voters. Slickly produced social media videos set out his vision of free buses, rent freezes and a higher minimum wage paid for by new taxes on the rich. His strong support of Palestinians and criticism of Israel has put him at odds with most of
Starting point is 00:23:31 the democratic establishment. But his critics argue his platform is too far left for moderates and certain to be weaponised by Republicans trying to paint the democratic party as out of touch. His opponent, the political veteran and former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who'd been leading in the polls, conceded early in the night. He had attempted to make a political comeback after resigning from office in 2021 over a sexual harassment scandal. He'd made fighting anti-Semitism a core part of his campaign
Starting point is 00:24:03 and committed to restoring the Democratic Party's appeal among working class voters, promising to hire more police officers, improve safety on the subway and remove red tape to build more affordable housing. At an election night party, he congratulated his opponent. Tonight was not our night. Tonight was Assemblyman Mondani's night. The confirmed winner of the Democratic Party nomination will face several contenders in November. This contest is being watched very closely by the Democratic Party more broadly as it considers a convincing political strategy to take on Donald Trump after a bruising defeat last November.
Starting point is 00:24:45 Chantal Hartle, next to the border between Thailand and Cambodia, where a bitter dispute has escalated. Thailand has now imposed restrictions on all travellers heading into Cambodia. Our reporter Katie Silver explains what's behind the move. Bilateral relations between them are at their lowest that we've seen in decades. We've already seen in terms of economic impacts, Cambodia banning the import or the purchase from Thailand of things like fuel, oil, fruit, vegetable, even Thai dramas and Thai films. What we've heard now is that crossing points are going to be closed across the seven border provinces.
Starting point is 00:25:19 Two exemptions include, for example, students or those who have medical needs to cross. But the military said in a statement that the new restrictions match the current security situation." Now, the latest we're seeing are scenes of dozens of tourists and workers being stranded. Stories, for example, of Cambodian workers who generally every day cross the border into Thailand for work, unable to return home, having to spend the night sleeping at checkpoints. There are stories, for example, of families with young babies being stuck there overnight as well. One reporter mentioned seeing the father having to change the nappy overnight of a young baby on this
Starting point is 00:25:53 border crossing. Foreign tourists as well, and there's implications there when it comes to potential tourism ramifications and tourism spend. Now all of this dates back in fact to when France first drew the 800 kilometre border in the early 1900s when it was ending its Indo-China occupation. There has been dispute about the way that was drawn for over 100 years, but things really came to a head in May where we saw some clashes and a Cambodian soldier was killed which really put relations between the two countries at their lowest level in decades. That analysis from Katie Silver.
Starting point is 00:26:24 Now are you a fan of these insects? Well, I have to say I'm not. They are wasps and they don't have the best reputation. But scientists say we need to learn to love them more because they help counter the huge biodiversity loss we're experiencing. That's why the Grant Museum of Zoology here in London has made them the focus of a new exhibition. So just how important are wasps to our natural environment? Suri-Ann Sumner is Professor of Behavioural Ecology. It is important to remember that bees sting as well and yet we tolerate their stings because
Starting point is 00:27:02 we know what they do in the environment. We know and appreciate their role as pollinators. Wasps are also really important in ecosystems, they are nature's pest controllers, they are pollinators, they are decomposers. Wasps are top predators within any ecosystem, so whether it's a farmed ecosystem or your garden or a natural ecosystem. And if you take away the top predator from a community, you're going to alter the whole balance of all the other organisms in it. Imagine taking a lion away from the Serengeti and imagine what would happen to all the prey species there. The same thing would happen with wasps. So when we remove wasps from our gardens or from our
Starting point is 00:27:43 buildings, we are taking away those wasps who are controlling all the other insect populations. They're really important in regulating all those other populations. But they're never going to hunt any particular species to local extinction because they tend to be generalist hunters, particularly the wasps that we encounter in our gardens. So they're really important in ecosystems. And they're also pollinators. Most people don't realise
Starting point is 00:28:08 that. But wasps have to visit flowers to get nectar because the adult wasps are actually vegetarians. Even though they hunt prey to feed to their brood, the adults themselves are vegetarians. So there are so many reasons to appreciate wasps and okay they might sting us but that's mainly because we behave badly. Sariya and Sumna are behavioural ecologists at University College London. Finally, the Hollywood team behind Top Gun have turned their attention and a sizeable budget to Formula One. The new movie F1 is released in the US and Britain this week.
Starting point is 00:28:41 It features Brad Pitt as a veteran driver who makes a surprise return to the circuit. What's he doing? Plan C. Be ready. He's got hope for some lucky brakes. Hope is not a strategy. Anything else, Professor? Drive fast. Well it was shot on real racing circuits with cooperation from the organisers and drivers. Rick Edwards has been speaking to the film's producer Jerry Bruckheimer who's been making blockbusters for more than 40 years. How did they try to make the film appeal to both Formula One super fans and complete newcomers to the sport? We had to make sure that somebody who's never been to an F1 race would
Starting point is 00:29:23 enjoy this movie. So what we did after we finished the movie, we had what we call a blind recruit, where you recruit an audience, but they have no idea what they're seeing. So they come in the theater and they see, oh, it's a movie about racing. And after the movie, we break them down to 20 people and we ask them questions.
Starting point is 00:29:38 This is in California. First question is, were you aware of F1? Have you ever been to a race? One hand went up. After the movie, we said, are any of you interested Have you ever been to a race? One hand went up. After the movie, we said, are any of you interested in F1 or seeing a race? Every hand went up. So the experience, they got enough out of it
Starting point is 00:29:52 that they understood the intricacies of F1 and yet enjoyed the movie. So we did our job as far as explaining it enough about tires and tracks and all the things. Now, for an F1 fan, a rabid fan, they say, oh wait a second, that can't happen. It's not a documentary. So you have to enjoy the enjoyment of being in the car with Brad, who trained for four months to be able to drive these cars. We started them in a road car, then we put them in an
Starting point is 00:30:17 F4 car, then an F3 car, and then finally into our car. We designed the car with Mercedes. We were embedded with the teams to nine races around the world, which was exciting for us just being a part of the sport and be hanging out with the drivers and the team principals and talking to them. So it was a blast and what we give you is a big exciting romantic fun movie with a phenomenal soundtrack. For a fan you got to go in and say look it this is not reality. Have fun with this movie. It's like Rocky on steroids. That's what it is.
Starting point is 00:30:49 How adamant were you and Brad that he had to be driving a car? We weren't going to make it any other way. Joe didn't want to make it unless they drove. Brad didn't want to make it. He wanted to make it real. They trained for four months to be able to do it. It was hard to be able to get in these, especially when they got up into the F2 engine with a F1 chassis. They're monsters, these cars. Brad was going 180 miles an hour and then breaking down to 50. Not only were they driving, they had to train in between because you're taking five G's. It's a killer on your neck and your back. So just to be able to break and hit those corners
Starting point is 00:31:29 at high speeds and not spin out, I mean it took a daunting cast by them putting the time and effort into doing it. So it's just more than then, a lot of actors just show up and do their lines and then go home. These guys are working 18 hours a day. Even when they're not filming they have to train to be able to get back in that car the next day. What were your insurance quotes like?
Starting point is 00:31:51 I don't even want to talk about that. But I'll tell you what was interesting is that they had a cap on us I think at 140 and one of our stunt drivers went and met with the insurance company and said it is more dangerous to them going to these turns at a lower speed because you need the downforce to get out of this. It's not like driving a normal car where the faster you go the more dangerous it is. It's the opposite here because of the downforce and they bought it and we got up to 180 miles an hour. Film producer Jerry Brookheimer.
Starting point is 00:32:24 And that's all from us for now but the Global News podcast will be back very soon. This edition was mixed by Nathan Chamberlain and produced by Nikki Virico, our editors Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye.

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