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Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. This edition is published in the early hours of Wednesday the 15th of April. Sudan marks a grim milestone, three years of civil war. We hear from a journalist who was trapped in a brutal siege there. President Trump suggests talks with Iran could resume in the next few days. And Ukraine says it's recaptured territory from Russia using just robots. Also in the podcast, the tech bosses using AI to create digital twins. The bot passed with flying colours. Employees could not distinguish between the human CEO and the bot CEO correctly. And? Talking to people we don't know that well puts us in a good mood. It exposes us to new information. It's a source of novelty and learning and new perspectives. And it's a chance to put something good into the world. How small talk can have big benefits. It's three years since a power struggle between two armed factions in Sudan erupted into full-blown civil war. The fighting between the regular army and the paramilitary rapid support forces has led to a de facto partition of the country and triggered the world's largest humanitarian crisis. The fall of the city of El Fasha in the western region of Darfur last October was one of the most brutal episodes of the conflict. Journalist Mohammed Suleiman was there, facing a communications blackout that cut off his connections to the outside world. He's now made it to safety and shared his story, as Barbara Platuscha reports. This sound is so familiar and so crucial to how we live our lives. But when Mohammed Suleiman entered the telecom's office in Port Sudan in January, he hadn't heard a phone ring for a very long time. He'd been isolated by conflict and unable to convey fully the horrors he was witnessing. I was flustered because people were talking on their phones inside the office. Throughout the past three years, my phone has mostly been silent. After I inserted the sim card, my tears flowed. When his phone sprang to life, it was pinging with three years of messages, news of colleagues who died, friends asking whether Mohammed was alive. A few days ago, a friend called me saying he thought I had died. Some people had told him that I was in Port Sudan, so he called me. But he didn't believe it until I called him back by video. Then he broke down in tears. Mohammed had been trapped in the western city of Al-Fasher, an epicenter of the war. From the beginning, communications were very unstable because of the fighting. But that became a full blackout when the paramilitary rapid support forces laid siege to the city. In some ways, the silence was almost as deadly as the violence. He felt suffocated as he watched people, including children, die of hunger, thirst and disease. He was unable to call and warn others when he saw drones coming. Once a shell narrowly missed him, but he lay still for half an hour, clutching his useless phone. And when the RSA finally took over the city in October last year, the relentless daily trauma exploded into apocalyptic scenes. The scenes of displacement are indescribable. It was like the day of judgment on earth. We saw dead children in the streets. We saw women crying from extreme hunger and thirst. And because there were two weeks to carry on, they left them on the road. There were people we knew by name, and we knew their fathers, but we could not provide anything for them. There was no food, no water, no fast aid to save them, or to carry them with us. You cannot do anything, so you step over them, jump over them, cry and continue walking. Many fled the fighting to the nearest safe place, the town of Tawila. The road they took was littered with the dead and injured. If there had been a way to call for help, says Mohammed, they wouldn't have had to leave so many wounded behind. There are things I cannot describe because they are inhumane. I cannot talk about them. And unfortunately, the media did not convey the scene. Until now, the world does not know what happened in Al-Fashe city, nor does the state know. Mohammed Suleiman is reconnected to the world. But he says, after what he's witnessed and experienced, it feels like the world has not returned to him. There's no international law in the world. There's no such thing as the United Nations. If there are human rights international organizations, no day would pass in Al-Fashe with people dying, hungry and thirsty, bombed by shells and drones. There's no ceasefire, no medicine, no basic necessities of life. This confirms that there is no world to begin with. And it's a different country. Sudan is fragmented, its peoples scattered. But says Mohammed, telling their story helps him hold on to a sense of purpose. There are events that happened that no one is left to narrate. And the memory remains only with us. Until we die, we will convey the truth to correct the situation for the next generation, so they live dignified and honored in their homeland. Sudanese journalist Mohammed Suleiman ending that report by Barbara Plattusher. Just days after US peace talks with Iran broke down, the negotiations could soon be back on. President Trump told a reporter that something could be happening over the next two days. While the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres says it's highly probable these talks will restart. The meeting in Pakistan on Saturday, the first at such a high level since the Iranian Revolution, ended in deadlock after 21 hours. At the time, the US Vice President J.D. Vance blamed Iran's refusal to abandon its nuclear weapons program. But at an event on Tuesday, he said he was hopeful a deal can still be done. Honestly, after 49 years, there's a lot of, of course, mistrust between Iran and the United States of America. You're not going to solve that problem overnight. But yeah, I think the people we're sitting across from wanted to make a deal. And I know the President of the United States told us to go out there and negotiate in good faith. That's what we did. That's what we're going to keep on doing. So if negotiations are back on, can they be any more successful? I asked our North America editor, Sarah Smith. Donald Trump has said that he thinks they might restart in a couple of days. He said that to a New York Post reporter who was speaking to him from Islamabad. That being where the talks at the weekend took place, of course. And he said, stay there because we might be talking again another couple of days. He didn't give any more details than that. On Monday, President Trump said that Iran had been in touch and they very badly wanted to do a deal. So he was suggesting that Iran might be prepared to agree to something they hadn't agreed to at the weekend. But it's not a told clear what or on what Donald Trump is basing that optimism. So no, it's not obvious looking at the situation why a deal might be any more likely if talks are to resume this week than it was when they were discussing them at the weekend. But as part of an ongoing process, keeping open channels of communication is, of course, the only way to try to move towards a deal. Has there been any movement on the sticking point? We've had an interesting revelation on one of the sticking points. I mean, the US's number one red line is that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. And America wants Iran to agree to stop any kind of nuclear development, stop enrichment activity of uranium, and to hand over the stockpile of enriched uranium it already has, which America fears could be used to make a nuclear weapon. It was reported in the United States that the Vice President JD Vance, the leading figure for the American negotiations, had said to the Iranians at the weekend that America wanted them to stop all nuclear activity for 20 years. Well, President Trump responded to that on Tuesday saying, no, he wasn't happy about the idea of it only being for 20 years. He wanted it to be forever because he didn't want it to look as though Tehran had won anything. He didn't want to appear to have been giving any kind of concessions to Iran at all. So that gives you an idea of the mindset with which the President is looking at these talks and an understanding of maybe just quite how difficult it's going to be to get any kind of agreement. One of the issues the Iranians were concerned about was the continued fighting in Lebanon. There has been a meeting in the US which could at least go some way perhaps towards resolving that. Yeah, there was a historic meeting in the US State Department in Washington between the ambassadors from Israel and Lebanon. Now, that's the first time those countries have met face to face in decades. They don't share diplomatic relations between them. They never normally talk to each other. So this was an important event in itself. After a couple of hours, both sides came out saying that it had been a productive meeting. The Israeli ambassador said that both nations had agreed that Lebanon wants to free itself from the influence of Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants who operate inside the country. The Lebanese ambassador said that they had agreed to talk again. So all of that is positive. They did not though manage to agree ceasefire. They did not come to any kind of agreement about Israel halting its attacks on Lebanon. And in fact, those attacks continued throughout the day. So without some kind of agreement on stopping those strikes, it's difficult to see how those countries are going to get much further on or how that could have a material impact on the discussions between America and Iran. Sarah Smith at the White House in Washington. Well, as well as the military conflict, the US and Iran have also been fighting a propaganda war, much of it on social media. The Iranians have gone viral with short videos mocking the US and Israeli war effort using AI-generated Lego characters, like this one featuring the AI-generated rap song, LOSER. The video shows a Lego version of President Trump injured in hospital. At one point, he's depicted as a circus clown jumping through a fiery hoop held by what looks like a Lego version of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The videos come from an Iranian digital company called Explosive Media. They spoke to a BBC podcast Top Comment and acknowledged that they have worked with the Iranian government. Explosive Media's YouTube channel has since been taken down. To find out more, Evan Davis spoke to Darren Linville, author of a study into Iran's tactics. The Iranians have been putting out a great deal of propaganda around the ongoing war. They have really done a great job of tapping into the language of the internet. A lot of their content is tongue-in-cheek, it's a reverent. What is powerful about the propaganda that the Iranians have been putting out is that it spreads organically. It's connecting with people that are frustrated with the Trump administration and with Israel. It's connecting with an audience that's frustrated with the ongoing war. They don't need to use their own resources, their own trolls to get their message out because they have a message that, frankly, people want to hear. What's amazing to me is that Iran, this theocratic regime, is managing to paint themselves as the good guy. And a lot of that is through the propaganda that they're spreading. The Trump administration continues to fight a political battle. They're engaging in the same kind of politics that they've been doing for years. Their messaging is targeting their base and they've been fairly successful there. Meanwhile, the Iranians are fighting a global war. They have been really successful at using digital media to make this conflict much more painful for Israel and for the United States. And certainly, if your picture of Iran is Mullahs hanging homosexuals, it gives a much sassier, more modern, youthful kind of impression of the way Iran speaks. It's more south part than Islamist. But I guess I'm puzzled as to who is doing this for them. They do seem to be young people with their fingers on the pulse of the internet. I think it's very likely they have some ties to the Iranian regime. But I think a lot of people have this image of Iran as a cloistered, theocratic regime that is insular. But the reality is a lot of Iranians study abroad. A lot of Iranians engage in social media. Iran runs a major media conglomerate in their state media system. So they definitely have the capacity to push a lot of messaging across broad communities and to do so very effectively. It's not hard to find these videos, as you've mentioned. Explosive media say their YouTube channel has been suspended for alleged violent content. What do we make of that? I don't think that will actually have much of an impact on their spread. You know, their Telegram channel is still up. The Trump administration has been putting out similar violent content and they're not being censored. And explosive media say seriously, are our Lego-style animations actually violent? But just tell me, what is the point of this propaganda war? Does it make actually any difference to the progress of the war? Oh, I think it absolutely does. Iran knows that they can't go to toe-to-toe with the US and Israel militarily and that this is one of a couple of powerful cards they have to play. There's no question that this is important to Iran. They want to make the war as painful as possible for Israel and for the United States and for Trump specifically. They want to try to shorten this conflict ultimately and one of the only ways they have to do that is through propaganda. Darren Linville, co-director of Clemson University's media forensics hub in South Carolina. Have you ever wished you could be in two places at once? Well, some chief executives believe they may have found a way to make it happen. They're using AI to create digital twins of themselves so they can appear in multiple meetings at the same time. The newsroom's Helena Burke has been looking into the technology. It's the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a sci-fi movie. Photo-realistic, AI-powered copies of real people that can respond to questions just like a real human. According to the Financial Times, Mark Zuckerberg Metta is developing a 3D character that users can interact with in real time. Mr Zuckerberg's clone is being trained in his mannerisms, tone and public statements. The idea is that he can appear to speak and answer questions at meetings that he's not really in. And the Metta boss isn't the first person to do this. Reed Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, has already created an AI version of himself. Reed AI, introduce yourself to everyone. Hello everyone, I'm thrilled to be here today. I'm an AI-generated version of Reed Hoffman, his digital twin. My thinking and everything I am saying comes from a custom GPT that is based on 20 years of Reed talking and making content. So I've read all his books, watched his speeches and listened to his podcasts. I think it gives me a pretty good sense of how you approach the world, Reed. The US software company Zapier also developed an AI clone of its CEO, Wade Foster. Professor Raj Chowdhury from the London School of Economics was involved in developing it. The experiment very briefly was where employees asked questions and the answer either came from the human CEO or the bot CEO. They had to guess what was the source, is it human, is it the bot. So what we found was the bot passed the Turing test with flying colors. Employees at Zapier could not distinguish between the human CEO and the bot CEO correctly. Of course, interacting with an AI copy of someone is not the same as actually speaking to them. And there are concerns that the new technology could be deceptive if it's not disclosed that the so-called person on the screen is actually AI. Professor Chowdhury believes these drawbacks could be mitigated with the right regulations. The three guardrails that I'm outlining are that it shouldn't be used for personal communication where you want to build human to human trust. There should be transparency and disclosure. And then you have to think about the IP, the property rights of this whole thing. Because I'm sure some of these discussions will reach the courtrooms eventually. In 2023, Meta launched a similar, less advanced technology which created AI clones of some celebrities. These were later removed following a backlash online with some users describing the AI copies as creepy and unnecessary. That report by Helena Berg. Still to come on this podcast, the challenges of making a film about Vladimir Putin. It was touchy politically. The book was the best seller, but turning that into a film that would be true to the talent of Giuliano, that was tough and avar. We speak to the director of The Wizard of the Kremlin. When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Granger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Granger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery. So you can keep your facility stocked safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRANGER, click Granger.com or just stop by. Granger. 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Arthur Holland and Michelle founded the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College in New York. He's been talking to Rebecca Kesby. The way these systems are being used is that they will serve in a fairly similar role as a human soldier. I mean, they have weapons on them. They can advance to positions. And my sense is that they would conduct an assault in a fairly similar manner. Probably in coordination with aerial drones that give us an eye in the sky and then humans back behind the lines to safe-from-move operating by remote control. As to the surrendering element, which is of course one of the most striking parts of this story, if you're a human soldier and you have something pointing a weapon at you, whether it is a human or a robot, you're going to respond in much the same manner. And they are, of course, eminently aware that someone is watching through the robot. Yeah, and just to be cynical for a moment, I mean, we do keep hearing how demoralized Russian troops are, what their casualty figures are like. I mean, is there a chance that Russian troops didn't need much persuading to surrender? Surrendering is never a proud moment. And I guess if you do so to a remote control vehicle, all the less so. Obviously, the big element of this is the publicity coup that comes with not only being able to demonstrate the technological prowess, but that you're also able to put Russians at risk and get Russians to surrender without putting any Ukrainian lives on the line. President Zelensky is on a bit of a PR offensive with the Ukraine's drone capability at the moment, isn't he? He's struck some lucrative deals in the Middle East recently. Is Ukraine really leading on this or are other countries either involved or do they have similar capability? As warfare becomes more automated, and we're suddenly seeing this also in the Gulf, it really becomes a question of numbers. Who can produce more drones? If you have more drones than the enemy has, measures to defend against it, say, interceptor missiles, then you win. And Ukraine has become undoubted leader in that respect. I mean, maybe Russia's close in terms of its production figures, but we're talking about millions of drones a year. There's certainly no European country that comes close, not the United States, not China, so it's really right up there. So what kind of ethical questions does this raise as well, though? Because we've seen how powerful they can be, and if they're cheap, how many can be produced. What does that mean ethically in terms of warfighting? Well, there are two parts of it. One is that it lowers the bar to entry. It lowers the threshold for lethal action. If you can put your adversary at risk, if you can create lethal effects without putting yourself in harm's way, then your calculus as to whether to take the risk to go to war changes and, in general, lowers. And that is, of course, problematic. But also, war is fundamentally a human endeavor. The laws of war apply to humans, the ethics of war apply to humans, and if you're talking about really offloading all of the steps in the kill chain to machines, then that is changing the normative paradigm. And there are questions of, of course, accountability and also the idea of its purpose. Ultimately, the goal should be to end these wars as quickly as possible. And if they are largely automated, the motivations, the incentives for bringing these conflicts to a close also changes and becomes less. Righter, Arthur Holland-Michel. The sacred national emblem of Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe bird, is finally returning home. The stone carving, which depicts a native eagle, is featured on Zimbabwe's flag and money. The sculpture was stolen by European explorers more than 100 years ago and then sold in South Africa. It's been in Cape Town ever since. The small soapstone bird came from the ruined city of Great Zimbabwe, which was built more than a thousand years ago. Zimbabwe an archaeologist, Professor Shadreg Chiri Kuri from the University of Oxford, explains the significance of the carving's repatriation. The bird that is being returned occupies a special place in Zimbabwe. This bird was recovered from what is known as the sacred enclosure on the hill complex at Great Zimbabwe. There were six other birds that were on a platform. This bird, which was part of a national shrine, symbolizing the ancestors of the kings who ruled Great Zimbabwe, the ancestors were responsible for providing fertility of the land, for the security of everyone, and for the general health. Therein lies the significance of the bird. It is associated with the health of the state. It is associated with the vitality of the nation. So it is not surprising that it is a national emblem and everyone has been yawning when is the bird coming home. And eagles, they have a strong symbolism amongst the Shona people. They are known to play the go-bit-gwin role between the living and the ancestors. So very spiritual, very sacred and very important. It's like a part of the country is now back. The country was incomplete with its emblem outside. Professor Shadrach Chiri Kuri from the University of Oxford. The novel The Wizard of the Kremlin, which depicts the rise of Vladimir Putin through the eyes of an adviser, has now been turned into a film. The Hollywood actor Jude Law plays President Putin. One Russian is more popular than I am. Stalin. I believe he's been dead for some time. Well, you intellectuals, you insist on denouncing the horrors of the gulag. You think Stalin was popular in spite of the killings. You're wrong. Stalin was popular because of the killings because he knew how to handle a thief, a traitor. Well, French director Olivier Assayes was asked to adapt the book by the author. He's been speaking to Sarah Montague about the challenges of doing so during the Russia-Ukraine conflict. I was a little bit nervous about the material because it was a lot of dialogue and I knew it was going to be trouble. It takes place in Russia where we have no access. It's supposed to be Russian-spoken, but if it's spoken in Russian, A.D. actors would lose their jobs forever and in any case we wouldn't be able to finance it. So we had to recreate Russia in Latvia and shooting in Latvia in winter is not the best experience in your life. It was touchy politically. I think it is about power, about how you manage to get power and once you've got it how you keep it. And in the case of Vladimir Putin how you keep it brutally. But I think there was something universal. It is about the transformation of modern politics more than about the specificity of the rise of Vladimir Putin. One of the criticisms of the book as much as the film is that it does glamourise President Putin. Do you think that's fair? That was certainly not what we wanted to do. We represented Vladimir Putin as a human being and it deals with events that precede by a decade the invasion of Ukraine. I mean, even if the war had already started. I felt a constant responsibility. When you make a movie, it's a very powerful tool. There is always the risk that your audience will take whatever fiction you're building within the framework of adapting a novel is something that becomes more believable than reality itself. There is a war going on with actual people dying. You're trying to be as true as possible to the facts and you have a responsibility towards the people who are fighting today in Ukraine to represent as fairly as possible the events that led to that war. And obviously I was extremely concerned with respecting and being as empathetic as I could to the actual brutality, violence, cruelty that the Ukrainian people are suffering today. French director Olivier Assayas. Now, how are you? You all right? Wasn't the traffic bad today? Well, at least it's not raining. Small talk like that may seem like chatting about nothing in particular, but a new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests it could actually boost both your mental and physical health. Wendy Irkart has the details. When a stranger sidles up to you and starts a conversation, are you the type to indulge in a little bit of small talk? Or does the very thought of talking to someone you don't know fill you with absolute horror? Gillian Sandstrom is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Sussex and author of Once Upon a Stranger, The Science of How Small Talk Can Add Up to a Big Life. She says that whether it's a chat about the price of onions, the stock market or what the kids have been up to, we should think twice before we pretend we're on a phone call to avoid getting involved in a bit of chit chat. The research shows us that having small talk, talking to people we don't know that well puts us in a good mood. It exposes us to new information. It's a source of novelty and learning and new perspectives. And it's a chance to put something good into the world. So just showing people that you see them and that you're acknowledging their fellow humanity is a way to do something meaningful. Gillian works from home and says that makes getting out in the open air and talking to people even more important. I'm sitting at my desk all day so I want to get up and get active and I go for a walk in a green space and talk to people with dogs. Those are the easiest people to talk to. But if you live in a city, I mean there's the person at the coffee shop, there's the person standing in a queue for the bus, there's people delivering packages. I think there's lots of opportunities out there. So next time you leave the house and someone starts up a random conversation about the weather, try to enjoy it. You don't know where it might lead and it might just put a smile on your face. Quick reset, something practical. Tiktok is packed with free workout plans. Home training, fat loss routines, muscle tips, no coach fee, no gym contract. Just follow and move. Download Tiktok now.
