--:-- Oliver Conway: This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Go on, get a little out there, into the big heart of Nevada, where you can go off-road and off the map, on two lakes or on horseback. Dip into hot springs and dive into deserts. Climb a mountain or make your best effort. See thousands of stars in some of the darkest skies. Stake out haunted hotels. Can you make it to sunrise? There's always something new to see because we've got plenty of space to just be. Plan your trip at TravelNevada.com.
--:-- Oliver Conway: In the shadows and flames primals will fall and from the blood and ash new gods will rise. Poppy was never meant to awaken and consequences are devastating. Stirring ancient powers from their slumber, transforming Castile and Kirin in ways the fates couldn't foresee. The great conspirator has returned to stop the primal of death. The gods have awakened harboring blood soaked secrets and every choice can undo everything. The primal of blood and bone, perfect for fans of Sarah J Maas and Rebecca Yaros. Available in print, e-book and audiobook.
--:-- Oliver Conway: You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. This edition is published in the early hours of Sunday, the 20th of October.
--:-- Oliver Conway: The Israeli Prime Minister accuses Hezbollah of trying to assassinate him after his home was targeted by a drone. US unions say a deal has been reached which could end a crippling five-week strike at the planemaker Boeing. And a new study reveals that playing video games makes your brain younger, but exercise does not.
--:-- Oliver Conway: It's like chess, and the smugglers are always one step ahead of us. We must adapt. And? I'm always conscious of that little kid in the audience who has been asking how many sleeps till the Lion King. I owe it to that child to be the best scar I can be.
--:-- Oliver Conway: How the story of the lion cub battling his wicked uncle is still going strong 25 years on.
--:-- Oliver Conway: The Israeli military may have wiped out almost the entire senior leaderships of both Hamas and Hezbollah, Hezbollah, but the wars in Gaza and Lebanon are grinding relentlessly on. Sirens in the Israeli city of Haifa on Saturday as rockets fired from Lebanon were intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome defences. One man was killed and at least nine injured in different locations in northern Israel. while Benjamin Netanyahu's private home in the coastal city of Caesarea was targeted in a drone attack.
--:-- Oliver Conway: The Israeli Prime Minister was not there at the time, but said it had been an attempt to assassinate him and his wife, and that Iran and its proxies would pay a heavy price.
--:-- Oliver Conway: People in the city had a mixed reaction to the barrage from Hezbollah. I feel, as a resident, unsafe, like I've never felt before in Israel. Israel has known wars like everyone's here. It was troublesome, but this is not the first time. They've had some success with the drones hitting us without sirens, low-flying, and it's something that we're going to have to learn to deal with going ahead.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Israel later carried out at least a dozen airstrikes on Beirut in the heaviest attack on the Lebanese capital in more than a week. The US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said America would like to see Israel scale back some of its strikes in and around Beirut.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Our Middle East regional editor Sebastian Asher told me what he made of the upsurge in the fighting. I think it's another escalation to a degree of the fact that a drone, which almost certainly was fired by Hezbollah, though they haven't actually confirmed that themselves, was targeting the private residents of the Israeli Prime Minister.
--:-- Oliver Conway: From a Hezbollah perspective, that would be widening its targets. Hezbollah has insisted, though in practice this hasn't been what has happened each time, but that it is going after military targets in Israel, not civilian targets. It's sort of prided itself on this.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Of course, we had the incident a few months ago when a missile hit 12 children who were playing football and they were killed. So it's by no means held to that in practice. But this would be a widening and the targeting of obviously the leader of the Israeli government is a worrying development.
--:-- Oliver Conway: As you said, we've had this statement from Mr Netanyahu himself. I was kind of anticipating this, that it would be framed this way, that's essentially an assassination attempt that failed by, as you just quoted, the agents of Iran. So very much putting the burden, the onus on Iran.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And I think that opens up the prospect that this anticipated Israeli strike that is going to come at some point against Iran, which we've been hearing about ever since Iran's barrage of ballistic missiles on October the 1st against Israel, that could be more severe than perhaps indications had been recently when it seemed the US had managed to talk the Israeli government perhaps out of hitting some of the biggest targets.
--:-- Oliver Conway: But if this is framed by the Israeli government as an assassination attempt on Mr Netanyahu and it's Iran that is essentially doing this, then one would expect there to be more consequences. We've seen in the past two or three hours attacks again on the southern suburbs of Beirut, The Israeli army has said that it was targeting munitions warehouses of Hezbollah and an intelligence headquarters.
--:-- Oliver Conway: We've heard that many times again. But there was a period of a few days when it seemed after the US had really pushed Israel that they pulled back on that. I think Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defence's words, will fall on deaf ears this time as far as Israel is concerned.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Sebastian Asher. Well, some 300 kilometres south of Lebanon, Israeli planes dropped leaflets over Gaza, showing a picture of the dead Hamas leader, Yehihar Sinwar, with the message Hamas will no longer rule Gaza.
--:-- Oliver Conway: But Hamas has not surrendered and the Israelis continue to attack. Late on Saturday, medics and Hamas-run media said Israeli strikes on the town of Beit Lahir had killed at least 73 people. That came after an overnight attack on the biggest refugee camp in the Palestinian territory, Jabalia, killed 33 people.
--:-- Oliver Conway: From Jerusalem, Virgil Keen reports. filmed by an Israeli drone, men from Jabalia, being screened for anyone suspected of links to Hamas. Residents said some, it's not known how many, were detained, and that some civilians were sent towards southern Gaza.
--:-- Oliver Conway: The army said they left because of what it called continuous pressure. The wounded escaping Jabalia to nearby Gaza City. The Israeli occupation continues to impose a complete siege on Jabalia affecting all aspects of life The occupation prevents food, water and medicine from reaching the residents cutting off all basic necessities Doctors in Jabalia say they're overwhelmed They've had power cuts hospitals surrounded by troops Please our brother and sister all the humanitarian societies urgent call just to please help our medical staff and the injured people.
--:-- Oliver Conway: This is a week in which Israeli leaders have promised victory. Tonight releasing new images of the operation in which Hamas leader Yaya Sinwar was subsequently killed. He's seen entering the of a tunnel with his family the night before he unleashed the horror of the October 7th attacks. Photographs of hiding places, with books, what looks like a fax and printer, beds.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Israel is vowing the war will go on. Sinwar has been eliminated, but our mission is not over. We will not rest until we bring all our hostages home by any means possible. And we will continue to defend the people of Israel from all threats on all of our borders.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Tonight, the UN accused Israel of forcibly displacing tens of thousands of people in northern Gaza. There is no end in sight to this war. Fargo Keane reporting from Jerusalem.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Other news now, and the US aircraft manufacturer Boeing has had a bad few years with two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019. In January this year, a panel in the fuselage blew off a plane in mid-air. For the past five weeks, the company has been grappling with a strike after 33,000 workers, mostly in Washington state, downed tools in a wage dispute.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Well, Boeing has now come up with a new pay offer, a 35% rise, and union members will vote on it next week. I asked our Washington correspondent, Rowan Bridge, how damaging the strike has been for Boeing and the wider US economy.
--:-- Oliver Conway: It one of a number of issues that Boeing have faced over the past year which have been pretty damaging to Boeing reputation frankly The strike itself has halted production of some of their most important aircraft And they announced earlier in the week that they were looking for $35 billion in extra funding and cutting 17,000 jobs, which is 10% of their total workforce.
--:-- Oliver Conway: But the impact is not just on Boeing. It goes beyond that into the supply chain, too. So you've got the strike itself, then you've got the rolling furloughs of non-striking workers. So effectively, staff at Boeing who are being forced to take unpaid leave where they're not getting their salary. And then you have temporary layoffs within Boeing suppliers as well.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And overall, that's cost something like 50,000 jobs from non-farm employment in the United States this month alone. Now, workers rejected a previous offer not that long ago. Will this deal end the strike? That is the key question in all of this. Ultimately, that is a decision for the union workforce.
--:-- Oliver Conway: The leadership of the union have described it as a deal that's worthy of consideration. But the deal doesn't give them all the things that they were looking for. Yes, they get a pay rise that's higher than what had been promised before. But what it doesn't give them is the pension benefits that they have asked for, specifically around a defined pension benefit scheme, meaning that they would get a guaranteed pension on retirement.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And that is not part of the deal. Now, the vote itself is going to be on Wednesday, and I think Boeing and the union will be holding their breath to see what happens with the membership. And could there be any impact of this dispute on the US election just over two weeks away?
--:-- Oliver Conway: I mean, the economy clearly has been and continues to be a key election issue. What I don't think you have seen is the sort of direct impact that a port strike that was threatened here in recent weeks would have had, because that port strike would have directly impacted consumer goods and, by extension, on voters.
--:-- Oliver Conway: I think that the Boeing strike doesn't have the same sort of impact because its ramifications don't run beyond the airline industry in the same way. Having said all of that, this is a very tight race and you want to get issues that could be seen as a wedge against you off the table if you can. So certainly it will be in Kamala Harris's interest if they can get the strike solved because it's one less thing for it to have to deal with in terms of the economy.
--:-- Oliver Conway: but I don't think it's a crucial issue in those battleground states in the way that some other issues might be. Rowan Bridge in Washington.
--:-- Oliver Conway: There was a time when doctors thought they were close to completely eradicating polio and cases have fallen 99% in less than four decades. But the disease does still persist in a couple of places, one of which is Pakistan. And the health authorities there announced on Saturday there's been a new outbreak.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Paul Moss heard more from our South Asia regional editor, Anbarasan Etirajan. According to Pakistan health officials, the wild polio virus cases have now gone up to 37 this year. That's quite a high amount of people affected. It mainly targets children under the age of five and it can cause paralysis.
--:-- Oliver Conway: After the vaccination was introduced in the 1950s, it has come down by 99.9% across the globe. But it is still endemic only in two countries, only Pakistan and Afghanistan, especially along the border areas where there is a huge movement of people along these tribal areas.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Now, the Pakistani authorities say they have been launching various vaccination campaigns to stop this. But if you compare it to the last year, it was only six cases reported. Now, you see the 37 cases. That is setting off real alarms among the Pakistani authorities.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And that's why they're also launching with a pre-planned program, another nationwide campaign end of this month to vaccinate about 45 million children. So why is it that a disease that's been eradicated everywhere else is provingly so stubbornly persistent in Pakistan and Afghanistan?
--:-- Oliver Conway: There are a number of reasons for why people are not willing to take a vaccine or administer vaccine to their children. For example, misinformation. You know, there have been videos circulating showing people falling sick. Basically, it was a fake video after taking this vaccination campaign.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Then there are cultural reasons where people are hesitant to take because there have been campaigns against vaccination. Some Islamist hardliners saying that it was a ploy by Westerners to sterilize Muslims. The other reason is that some of these families, they say, They forced these healthcare workers to put a mark on the hands of the children so that they had already been vaccinated, but actually they were not.
--:-- Oliver Conway: That is also causing problem for the authorities. So there is misinformation and also lack of awareness and the insecurity. Number of polio vaccination workers were being attacked. These are some of the reasons why they were not able to make progress in vaccination campaign.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Anwarasam Etirajan, talking to Paul Moss.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Every year, thousands of people make the risky voyage across one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, trying to cross from France to Britain, often in the flimsiest of dinghies in search of a better life. Despite the dangers and the deaths, the boats keep coming.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Now, the French authorities are increasingly turning to the courts to try to deter the smuggling gangs. Andrew Harding has been following one prosecution in the northern French city of Lille. 21 alleged people smugglers, one big gang, Accused of transporting people illegally from Europe Across the channel to the UK The accused mostly Iraqi Kurds One French woman, one Polish man OK, we're going into the courtroom now This is the biggest cross-channel smuggling case to come to trial The prosecution is asking for the ringleader to get 15 years in prison.
--:-- Oliver Conway: But will that act as a deterrent? In court, the prosecution calls the accused merchants of death, a callous gang making 60,000 euros in profit from each overloaded boat that it launched into the channel. We weren't allowed to talk to those leading this case, but we did get a rare interview with a different French prosecutor, head of the regional court of appeal, Pascal Marconville, a man with huge experience in prosecuting smugglers.
--:-- Oliver Conway: It's like chess, and the smugglers are always one step ahead of us. We must adapt. The smugglers operate just like drug gangs. The action taken by French police, supported by investigative judges, is designed not only to thwart the smugglers, but to make their operations so expensive that they lose their appeal.
--:-- Oliver Conway: A sensible strategy, perhaps, but is it working? During a break in the trial, we've come to a nearby cafe to talk to one of the defence lawyers. My name is Kamel Abbas, and I'm a French lawyer from Little Bar Association. And you're defending some of these alleged smugglers? Exactly.
--:-- Oliver Conway: You've been covering these sort of cases for a long time. How have things changed over the years? The sentences have become a lot heavier. That's clear, he says. Fifteen years for some. Before that, they were just set free. So the legal framework is getting much tougher, and I think it will continue to do so.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And do you think that's sensible? Do you think that will help discourage people from getting involved in smuggling? No. No. There are some who put money above all things. So for them, prison sentences are just a bump in the road.
--:-- Oliver Conway: A case like this involves Belgium, Holland, Germany, Greece and France. Are you seeing better coordination, cooperation? Yes, Abbas says. European prosecutors are cooperating well.
--:-- Oliver Conway: From your experience, do the big fish, the real powerful smugglers, ever get caught? They're in England and in Iraq. He's saying they're in England or in Iraq. He's saying that if you really want to tackle this industry, you've got to go after the bosses, and so he's saying the British authorities should be looking closely in the UK for the ringleaders, because if you want the pyramid to fall, you have to start with the top.
--:-- Oliver Conway: As for this trial, so big it's generated 67 tonnes of paperwork, it's due to end with verdicts and sentencing in early November. Andrew Harding reporting from Lille.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Playing video games makes your brain younger but doing exercise does not That's the striking finding of a new study So should we forget jogging and take up games like FIFA, Grand Theft Auto and Minecraft instead? Professor Adrian Owen is a neuroscientist from Western University in Canada He's been talking to Nick Robinson along with Keza MacDonald a video game editor for the British Guardian newspaper.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Video gaming turns out to be very good for cognition, for things like improving your memory and your reasoning and your problem solving. But physical exercise, contrary to I think what a lot of people believe, didn't improve those things. It didn't actually have any effect on cognition at all.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Now you're not talking about me popping out now and for the first time playing one hour of FIFA You're talking proper gamers Well actually we split the group into people that did no gaming people that only gamed about three hours a week and people that gamed a lot more than that Even those who gamed for three hours a week had significant cognitive benefits.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And there'll be lots of people listening who maybe do memory joggers. They'll do those crossword books or sudoku because not just they enjoy them but they think it's good for their memory. Did you look at that? We didn't. We specifically looked at video games because this is an area that's quite controversial.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Obviously, a lot of people worry about video games, but we were interested to see whether problem solving, solving the sorts of puzzles that are often integral to modern video games would actually improve those parts of the brain that are responsible for performing those things. And I sense you were surprised.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Let's ask Keza, who knows all about people who game, and games, no doubt, yourself. Are you surprised by this finding? I can't say I was remotely surprised, to be honest. Although I suppose as someone who's been playing video games for 30 years, it's nice to find out that they also help your brain.
--:-- Oliver Conway: But I think anybody for whom games is a part of their life would tell you they're very enriching. And in part for people who don't play them at all, Keza, they are complex. They involve your brain puzzling things out all the time. Video games are, of course, by nature, interactive. So you're a co-creator in the game experience with the developer.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Like your experience of the game is unique. And whether it's a shooter or a puzzle game or an adventure, you're working your way through complex challenges every time you're playing a game. Professor Owen, to be clear, you're not saying exercise is bad, but it doesn't do this thing that it might have done.
--:-- Oliver Conway: That's absolutely right. In fact, it did have an effect on the brain. We saw improvements in mental health with physical exercise. So people's anxiety went down, people's depression went down. So it does have an effect on the brain. And of course, physical exercise is good for you. Physiologically, it's good for your body, but it's not the thing you should choose if you're trying to improve your cognitive function.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Now, tough question for you, because you're on the BBC and you can't recommend this or that brand. But for someone like me, who's just been humiliated the few times I've played FIFA with my boys, for example, what can you take up late in life when you're not a gamer and you find fiddling with that joystick incredibly difficult?
--:-- Oliver Conway: I would say these days there are games for anything. Whatever you're interested in, in your normal life, there will be a game about it or a game that has that theme. There are games about hard things like grief and loss. There are games about family. There are games about all kinds of life experiences.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And crucially, there are lots of very simple, very enriching little puzzle games on your phone these days. Keza McDonald and Adrian Owen talking to Nick Robinson.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And still to come on the Global News podcast. I was sitting there looking at the screen, wondering, you know, am I the only living person to have read this? The lost ghost story from the author of Dracula. Moto Casino, America's social casino. Welcome to Moto Casino, where the excitement never ends. With thousands of the hottest free-to-play social casino games, fastest payouts, and the best promotions in the industry.
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--:-- Oliver Conway: Go on, get a little out there into the big heart of Nevada, where you can go off-road and off the map on two lakes or on horseback. Dip into hot springs and dive into deserts. Climb a mountain or make your best effort. See thousands of stars in some of the darkest skies. Stake out haunted hotels. Can you make it to sunrise? There's always something new to see because we've got plenty of space to just be. Plan your trip at TravelNevada.com.
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--:-- Oliver Conway: With the US presidential election just 16 days away, Kamala Harris has been trying to shore up support from a key voting bloc, black men. According to recent polling, they are not backing her in the same numbers as they did for Joe Biden four years ago.
--:-- Oliver Conway: That could significantly dent her chances in places like Georgia, which has the largest population of black voters of any swing state. Leonard Helfique reports now from Savannah in the Democratic-leaning Chatham County.
--:-- Oliver Conway: It's been a long time since Savannah, with its antebellum architecture and centuries-old oak trees covered in Spanish moss, has been a priority for a Democratic candidate for president. But with Georgia as one of the biggest prizes of this election, the way to win this swing state may just be through suburban and rural areas here in the Southeast.
--:-- Oliver Conway: As president, Kamala Harris will continue to fight. Voters have been bombarded with ads. Kamala Harris is ramping up efforts even more to sway one key group. It sounds like it's mixed well into the beat. At the recording studio, Straight Fire Entertainment, I spoke with a group of Black men who have no plans to vote for Kamala Harris.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Her Good Vibes campaign hasn't reversed a worrying trend of young Black men abandoning Democrats. We vote, we vote. People promise, people promise, people promise, and we never get anything. 43-year-old John Pierre tells me his family will vote for Kamala Harris, but he's decided not to vote at all.
--:-- Oliver Conway: His business is suffering as customers struggle to afford studio time. We've seen what the economy's been like under Biden and Kamala. We've seen what the economy's been like under Trump. Right now, I'm just not sold on anybody. His friend, 35-year-old Ben Adams, also known as DJ Protocol, is all in for Donald Trump, who he says shares the very qualities he admires in his father.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Very blunt, very brash, very straightforward. They say they're going to do something, they go figure out a way to get it done. That, to me, reminds me of, you know, they call it toxic masculinity now, but to me it's just straight-up masculinity. It's straight manhood. I'm going to go out and I'm going to do what I need to do for my family.
--:-- Oliver Conway: To stem Donald Trump's potential gains here, Democrats have dispatched their heavyweights. Good afternoon, Savannah. Kamala Harris became the first nominee to visit this county since the 90s. If you show up as you did in 2020. Bill Clinton was sent out to shore up the rural vote in the southeast. and Barack Obama had this direct message to black men thinking of sitting out the election.
--:-- Oliver Conway: You just aren't feeling the idea of having a woman as president. Cut your cell phones off and pull your driver's license and your ID out, please. Well, there's been a steady stream of people coming here to cast their ballots early at this library in Savannah, and there's even more pressure on the candidates to get their message out.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Kamala Harris is expected to carry a majority of black Americans who make up a third of the electorate in this state. But her numbers with young black men could have an outsized impact. Her campaign has responded in the last few days by promising them more economic opportunities and by launching a tour across historically black colleges.
--:-- Oliver Conway: At Georgia's oldest public historically black college, Savannah State, the marching band is practicing for the yearly homecoming celebration. Many of these students say Kamala Harris will get their vote but not because of her race being that Kamala is African-American woman that does not just particularly sway me to just go with Kamala because she's black.
--:-- Oliver Conway: I just really want to understand who actually cares. In an election this close, this once loyal voting base is keeping Democrats on their toes. Nene Tawfiq reporting from Georgia.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Well, even as the 2024 race nears its conclusion, the controversy over the 2020 presidential election has not gone away. Donald Trump remains accused of trying to overturn Joe Biden's victory. And a judge has released some additional evidence.
--:-- Oliver Conway: The material was used by special counsel Jack Smith to bring charges against the former US President Reporting from Washington Gordon Carrera Donald Trump lawyers had argued the documents should be kept sealed until November 14 which would be after the US presidential election.
--:-- Oliver Conway: They'd argued that releasing the material could be construed as election interference, but the judge said that withholding the material from the public could also be seen as interference. The documents are material filed by Prosecutor Jack Smith in a case alleging Mr Trump was involved in election fraud relating to the 2020 election, including a conspiracy to obstruct official proceedings in the form of the session of Congress due to count the votes on January 6, 2021.
--:-- Oliver Conway: More than 1,800 pages have now been made public, but they do contain extensive redactions in which some of the contents will remain secret. Any trial will not take place until after the coming election.
--:-- Oliver Conway: It was delayed after the Supreme Court this summer ruled that Mr Trump had immunity from prosecution for certain official acts, leading to a reframing of the charges. Gordon Carrera.
--:-- Oliver Conway: An amateur historian has discovered a long-lost story by Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. More than 130 years old, the tale, Gibbet Hill, was found in a newspaper archive in the author's hometown Dublin.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Stephanie Zacherson has the details. Brian Clear is a writer himself who's always been fascinated by the 17th century horror author. So while on leave from work after surgery to improve his hearing, he spent weeks at the National Library of Ireland, indulging his interest in historical literature and the works of Stoker.
--:-- Oliver Conway: In the newspaper archive, the largest in the country, he came across a publication he'd never heard of before, a Christmas supplement in a newspaper from December 1890. I read the words Jibbit Hill and I knew that that wasn't a Bram Stoker story that I'd ever heard of in any of the biographies or bibliographies and I was just astounded, flabbergasted.
--:-- Oliver Conway: I couldn't believe it that I was potentially looking at a lost ghost story from Bram Stoker. After reading A Loving Dracula as a child, Brian Cleary had read everything by Stoker he could find so he instantly knew that this hidden gem could be something very special.
--:-- Oliver Conway: I was sitting there looking at the screen wondering, am I the only living person to have read this? So Brian Cleary went to Paul Murray, a Stoker biographer, who confirmed there had been no trace of the story for over a century.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Gibraltar Hill is very significant in terms of Bram Stoker's development as a writer. Published in 1890, that's the year that Bram Stoker makes his first notes for writing Dracula. And I see Gibbett Hill as a way station on that route between the younger Bram and the Bram who will publish Dracula in 1897.
--:-- Oliver Conway: After publishing his masterpiece, the Gothic novel about the vampire count, it's thought that Bram Stoker had planned to release three volumes of short stories. But after his death in 1912, only one was published posthumously by his wife Florence, The other two never appeared in print.
--:-- Oliver Conway: So what is this resurfaced tale about? It's a classic Bram Stoker story, you know, the struggle of good and evil. Evil often crops up in exotic, unexplained ways. It is a dark tale of a man travelling through the English countryside who comes across a haunting story involving murders, hangings and demonic children.
--:-- Oliver Conway: The rare find is now being brought to the public at an exhibition in the Irish capital, with its first public reading planned as part of Dublin's annual Bram Stoker Festival. Stephanie Zacherson.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Now a quick message from Nick Miles about a special edition of the Global News podcast ahead of the UN's annual climate change conference in November. Record-breaking hurricanes in America, droughts and floods in China and around the world, the highest sea temperatures on record.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Climate change has never been so clearly with us, but sometimes it can be confusing, to say the least, about what the UN Climate Change Conference is trying to achieve and what it delivers, which nations are leading the way and which are dragging their heels.
--:-- Oliver Conway: We need your questions to put to our experts. Just email us at globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. Thanks. And if you can send a voice note, then all the better.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Finally, Lion King the Musical at the Lyceum Theatre here in London has just turned 25, and it's marking its quarter century with a gala performance. 19 million people have seen the West End version of the Disney story about the lion cub Simba, his father Mufasa, and villainous uncle Scar.
--:-- Oliver Conway: But what's the secret of the show's long appeal? We heard from George Asprey, who plays Scar, and Sean Escoffrey, who stars as Mufasa. To kind of land such an iconic role for me was just a dream come true. Scar, he is the quintessential British villain.
--:-- Oliver Conway: His one-liners are absolutely phenomenal, which for me is always much more fun than playing the goodie. It was just simply wonderful. What is it about the music that appeals to audiences so much? They are phenomenal songs.
--:-- Oliver Conway: You have the original songs from the film, but also in the musical you have the African songs, like Shadowlands, which is sung by Nala when she realises she has to leave her pride and go out and find a way to save the Pride Land.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And where the journey may lead me Let this world be my guide Though it may take me so far away I remember my cries It's so emotive, it's incredible. But I'm not just saying this because he's here, but my favourite song is the song They Live In You, a song by Mufasa, Sean.
--:-- Oliver Conway: They live in you They live in me They're watching over Everything we see Every night you sit behind the back cloth and I listen to Sean sing the song and I don't know if it's because I'm a parent and it's a father talking to his son.
--:-- Oliver Conway: I sit there and I listen and I'm just completely lost in the music. I love that song. It's literally about me singing to my ancestors. They live in me. They're watching over. And talking to my son and asking for help to explain what King is and how I can teach him in the best way possible for him to understand.
--:-- Oliver Conway: It's got deep meaning. George, maybe you first, but how do you keep it fresh after that amount of time? There's a freedom that you have as an actor when you know a role so well. I don't have to think about the lines. I can concentrate on the thoughts of the character.
--:-- Oliver Conway: I can try new things all the time. If they work, we keep them. And if they don't work, then we discard them for the next show. Also, there's a huge responsibility that we have in this show. For instance, for so many children, this is going to be the first show that they see.
--:-- Oliver Conway: So I'm always conscious of that little kid in the audience who, for the last four months, has been asking their parents, how many sleeps till The Lion King? How many sleeps till The Lion King? And I owe it to that child to be the best scar I can be on that show.
--:-- Oliver Conway: I take my job very seriously. If I haven't made a young child cry by the interval, then I'm very disappointed. Sean, is there a particular moment that affects you the most when you're doing it? When Tenjiwe, he sings, he plays Rafiki, and that first note, every single time it gives me goosebumps.
--:-- Oliver Conway: The opening of that show is like no other. no matter how many times I see it no matter how many times I listen to it it always has the same effect on it Sean Escoffrey and George Asprey talking to Caroline Wyatt.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And that's all from us for now but the Global News Podcast will be back at the same time tomorrow This edition was mixed by Martin Baker and produced by Nicky Verrico Our editors, Karen Martin I'm Oliver Conway Until next time, goodbye.
--:-- Oliver Conway: America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London. And this is The Global Story.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
