Rubio: US trying to reopen strait as a 'favour to the world'

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service, coming to you live from London. I'm Paul Henley. Later on in the programme, we'll hear from the lead vocalist of Iron Maiden on the future of heavy metal and this. The appeal of a WhatsApp group in which you are only allowed to whistle. This is NewsHour. Welcome. Now, the fact that there have been new clashes between Iran and the US in the Strait of Hormuz would seem to indicate a return to hostilities in the war America and Israel started on the 28th of February. But although Iran says what's happening there amounts to a violation of the ceasefire, the US sees things differently. In the past hour, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in a White House briefing that US operations in the Strait of Hormuz were purely defensive. This is not an offensive operation. This is a defensive operation. And what that means is very simple. There's no shooting unless we're shot at first. We're not attacking them. But if they're attacking us or they're attacking a ship, you need to respond to that. You're not going to let some fast boat come up on a ship and shoot it up. we're going to respond to it and we've been successful at it. I don't know what the exact number is, but I know a number of those fast boats have now been targeted and will continue to be if they pose a threat to our forces. We'll shoot down drones, we'll shoot down missiles, but it's defensive in nature. This is defensive. So if you hear stories about attacks and launching of firing back and forth, it's not back and forth. We are only responding if attacked first. This is a defensive operation and that's what's occurring here. Speaking at an event in the Oval Office a short while ago, President Trump repeated his position that the US was accomplishing its objectives. Iran wants to make a deal. What I don't like about Iran is they'll talk to me with such great respect and then they'll go on television, they'll say, we did not speak to the president. We did not, I just spoke to, we did not speak to the president. So they play games, but let me just tell you, They want to make a deal. And who wouldn't when your military is totally gone? We could do anything we want to them. Who wouldn't? Mr. Trump added that U.S. forces did not face any threat from the Iranian military. They've got three, four guys. They got a little machine gun in front. They're shooting at one of our ships. That's meant for it. It bounces. We don't even know they're being shot at. And then they take it out with an Apache helicopter in about two seconds. They go, Apache, Apache, ship, northwest, 10 degrees. Turns around, boom. I don't like that, you know? You lose people. All these people are so unnecessary. Well, earlier, this warning came in a post on X from the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Mohamed Bagar Galibaf. We know full well that the continuation of the status quo is intolerable for America, whilst we have not even started yet. What President Trump calls his project freedom to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping traffic has now been in place since Monday. For a military perspective on how it was going, I turned to Mark Montgomery, who's a retired US Naval Rear Admiral. I asked him, what was Project Freedom trying to achieve exactly? I don't think we've truly laid it out clearly, but I think the goal here is to supplement our blockade of Iranian ships getting out by a program to allow Western ships, you know, ships from our Arab partners, but also ships, American and other ships that are not bringing Iranian shadow fleet oil out. We want to allow those ships to get out while we continue the blockade of the Iranian shadow fleet. So Defense Secretary Hegseth says Project Freedom is working. And the proof of that is that two ships made it through. Do you agree? I would say Project Freedom has worked. Two ships got through. Whether or not it has a long-term feasibility of working, I think would be judged by, you know, as we start to get into the 20 to 30 to 40 ships getting through. And do you envisage that happening? Do you think it can be successful? Well, look, part of this is, you know, how bad the Iranians want to stop this. if they're willing to throw everything they have left at it in terms of missiles and drones and fast attack craft, which may get chewed up by the United States and have no effect. So, but if they're willing to take that risk, there's a chance they could hit one of the merchant ships. And I don't know how the other merchant ships will react to that. When I escorted ships through back in the late 1980s, I wasn't there for the first escort, but the first one, a merchant ship hit a mine and it slowed everything down for three weeks while we tried to figure out how to do it better. So a hit on a ship will be a big issue. And that's the point, isn't it? Iran doesn't have to throw everything it's got at it to cause disruption in the strait. They just have to cause some disruption with the odd incident. And indeed, they can resume firing at other countries like the UAE, which they already have done. So I'd break that up and say, you're right. I mean, they could get lucky with just thrown a few things out to hit one. I think to actually get through what the U.S. Navy and U.S. military more broadly have set up, they'll really have to throw everything at it. They threw a lot at the two Navy ships and the two merchants yesterday, you know, 12 cruiser ballistic missiles, some on a greater number of drones and at least six speedboats that no longer exist, and they did not impact the four ships. So it's going to take a lot to do it. But you are right. They can kind of go off axis and attack critical infrastructure in a third party state like the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia. And they have a chance of, you know, causing damage here. Now, I will say they did that yesterday. And the United Arab Emirates did a very good job engaging those inbound weapons. I do recognize there were three injured personnel. But Iran can always do that. If they do too much of that, I think they'll reinitiate major combat operations. That's how America would react, is it? Well, I think that we've shown great restraint, right? We had all these stuff fired at our ships, stuff fired at our Arab partner, the United Arab Emirates. And we did not, we didn't even do a proportional strike back. I think if it happens again, we might do what I would call a proportional strike and hit the facilities from whence those missiles or boats came from. We would not do an escalatory strike. I think they're going to try their hardest to prevent this from escalating back into major combat operations. I think the United States, President Trump does not want that. But he'll have to do it if they are too aggressive. If the U.S. carried out what you're calling proportional strikes back, there'd be no pretending that there was still a ceasefire in place, would there? Well, I mean, that's one of the things you have to, we're pretending on the first, we're pretending on their strikes against us. maybe we can pretend on a proportionate strike against them. Again, they chose not to do that for the exact reason you're implying there, which is they'd like to pretend this was not a violation of the ceasefire. In terms, can I ask you, of the military campaign now and since the US first attacked Iran, do you think the president and his team have a coherent strategy? So I would break that up into, do we have a coherent strategic end state? Absolutely not. I mean, I think at times it's been regime change and at times it's been changing how the regime acts. And at times it's been, let's just get out of this. Retired U.S. Naval Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery. He is currently Senior Director at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C. To Serbia in Eastern Europe now and 18 months ago, the collapse of a concrete canopy at a railway station in Serbia's second biggest city, Novi Sad, killed 16 people and sparked continuing protests across the country. Now critics of the government there say they are determined to keep fighting for answers about who was responsible. From Novi Sad, Jill McGivering reports. For me, coming to this place, it's really emotional. It's always sad. This is like a graveyard. Jelena Bojic is a journalist-turned-activist who is still haunted by the tragedy of November 1st, 2024. I met her outside the now-deserted station building, where the concrete canopy fell. Giant hearts propped against the barricades commemorate the victims. Jelena is one of many still haunted by what happened. This is like a memory that 16 people were killed and 18 months after that, in this moment, we still do not have somebody who is responsible. We still do not have justice for these people and I would say we still do not have peace for these people. I can truly say that Novi Sad is not the same city since 1st November 2024. Something stole happiness from us. We do not feel this as a happy town anymore. Within days the shock and grief in Novi Sad had erupted into anger The city was rocked by mass protests which soon spread to the capital Belgrade and across the country The protesters, led by students, accused the government of lies and corruption and demanded that someone be held accountable. After a year without answers, Diana Herke announced a hunger strike. She'd lost her son, Stefan, in the disaster. She told me she'd hoped the hunger strike would force the authorities to notice her, but no one did. Things just got worse, she told me. I was being harassed and felt under threat. I realised that if I died, there'd be no one left to fight. Eighteen months on, the mass rallies have largely abated. Critics of the government accuse it of being increasingly repressive, an allegation echoed recently by the European Union. Supporters of the government say the criticism is unwarranted and politically motivated. In a bustling cafe in Novi Sad, I met Professor Jelena Klout. She has just lost her job at Novi Sad University. Officially, an old, dismissed complaint against her was revived. But she feels it's because she supported the protests and she's defiant about the canopy collapse. We are normally not angry people, But when you see that no one is still being punished or seriously charged, when you feel that there are so many loose ends and avenues of interrogation that needs to be finished, all these little things anger people. So I think even though you wouldn't see it on the streets, it's a sunny day, we are sitting and having coffee. But people are really, really angry about how government handled this crisis. The ruling party does have support. I saw tens of thousands of people gather in central Belgrade for a huge rally, addressed by the president, Aleksandr Vucic. He describes the protesters as agents of foreign powers trying to destroy Serbia. But many see the groundswell of anger triggered by the Novi Sad disaster as a continuing threat to his position. That report from Jill McGivering in Novi Sad, the second city of Serbia. Don't forget if you want to listen to NewsHour but miss the live broadcast, there's a podcast of the programme available, updated twice a day. You need to search for BBC NewsHour podcast and you should find it there. You can subscribe to the feed as well if you want to get it on a regular basis. You're listening to the BBC World Service live from London. I'm Paul Henley with NewsHour. Coming up, the lead singer of the heavy metal band Iron Maiden on why some of their music is still relevant today. The headlines. the US Secretary of State says the operation to enable merchant vessels to transit the Strait of Hormuz is the first step towards reopening the waterway. At least 21 people have been killed across Ukraine in the latest wave of Russian attacks. And the operator of a Hantavirus-stricken cruise ship says specialised aircraft are en route to evacuate two ill crew members to the Netherlands. I'm Paul Henley with NewsHour, live from the BBC. Employees of Google's AI lab DeepMind here in the UK have asked for official recognition of two unions as concerns grow over the company's technology being used by the US and Israeli militaries. Staff made their request in a letter to the management, and it came after the Pentagon last week announced agreements with Google and six other AI companies to deploy their technology on classified military networks. This February, the boss of Google DeepMind, Sir Demis Hassabis, told the BBC the industry wanted smart regulation against what he called the real risks posed by the technology. There's two main worries. I think one is bad actors, you repurposing these technologies for harmful ends. And then the second worry is a more technical risk, which is as these AI systems get more powerful, more autonomous, maybe entering the agentic era? How do we make sure we can build robust enough guardrails to keep them doing what we want them to do? John Chadfield is National Officer for Technology at the Communication Workers Union, one of those unions that Google workers in this country want recognised. He told me what Google employees had been telling him about their concerns. The contracts that Google are now looking at with the Pentagon, with the Department of War, with the Israeli Defence Forces, fundamentally clash with the values of Google DeepMind and the employees. And there was an idea that people came to Google DeepMind to work on IAI for good for a very long time. The old guard of researchers joined DeepMind at a time when it was focused on medical applications. They joined Secure Cancer not to become a military contractor. Actually, the CEO of DeepMind shares some of those concerns, doesn't he? Yeah, and listen, the employees we represent also echo the feelings of senior leadership in the UK. There are senior Google managers and leaders that feel that the company has taken a wrong turn and they want it to course correct before it's too late. It might be against their principles, but is it against their contract that the use of what they're making moves on? Well, I think the employer has pointed to a fairly woolly and ineffectual cause about lawful usage. And that's just not specific enough, I think. If you were to talk to these workers, and as many of them have talked to the press, they talk very concretely about their knowledge of Google's complicity with war crimes. Essentially, contracts and products being sold for the use of target acquisition in Gaza in an ongoing genocide, you know. These are things that the workers are acutely aware of, and they don't sound particularly like lawful usage to me, and they definitely don't sound alike to these workers. And there was never any specific mention in staff contracts of the use of the company's artificial intelligence models in military settings? No, there's no coverage for that. And indeed, Google themselves have published their own ethical AI guidelines, which they're not following. And instead of addressing that, they're either trying to play it down or tweak their own ethical AI guidelines to meet a profit, I guess. I've got to say they're chasing a profit over ethics or anything else. And I think that's what the employees have become more and more aware of. And that's why they're pushing to unionise. And what would you say to the view that Google, as the employer, has the right to decide how to use its product? I'd say these employees have the right to unionise, collectivise and have a seat at the table to challenge that. And do you think that their effort will work? What happens next? What happens next is, you know, Google have a playbook, a union busting playbook. Like many big tech companies, they'll play down the importance of what we've announced today. And then they'll prevaricate and delay. And then they hope in that delay, the interest for this will wane. But we know and are confident as time goes on, you know, just like we saw with last week's open letter to Google leadership, mostly from U.S.-based Googlers, now received over 1,000 signatures of employees on record saying they're worried about the contracts the company are signing. you know that's another signal that this effort and other unionisation efforts in the future will be successful. John Chadfield from the Communication Workers Union speaking to me earlier we did ask Google for a response we haven't yet had one we are happy to interview someone from Google of course on the subject if they give us the opportunity. Starting a business can be overwhelming you're juggling multiple roles designer marketer logistics manager all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. Welcome back to NewsHour. Now there's been another reminder today that there is no let-up in Russia's war of invasion against Ukraine. The latest series of Russian strikes has made today a very bad one in terms of Ukrainian casualties. And there's some doubt in Moscow over safety during Russia's parade planned for Saturday to commemorate its victory in the Second World War. Vitaly Shevchenko, who's Russia editor of BBC Monitoring, gave us the latest first on the attacks today? Well, this was an evening of relentless strikes in Ukraine, and they targeted key regional centres. As things stand at the moment, the death toll is 21 people, 12 killed in Zaporizhia, Five in Kramatorsk in Donetsk region, four in Dnipro, six injured in Sumy. And that's just this evening, Paul. In the morning, there were separate strikes targeting gas wells in Ukraine, killing four people in Poltava and one in Kharkiv. So it's a dire situation in Ukraine where civilians keep getting killed. President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a statement this evening in which he described the attack on Zaporizhia as a terrorist strike devoid of military sense. And he also spoke about Russia's proposal to ceasefire to mark Victory Day celebrated in Russia on Saturday. And the Ukrainian president said, well what we need is not a brief halt to the killing and the attacks What we need is lasting peace There was a report from Moscow that the Russian and US foreign secretaries had spoken How engaged do you think the US still is on this Well, at the moment, I don't get the impression that the United States has much time for this war, given that it's so involved with another war, with the war in Iran. So at the moment, Ukraine, given the fact that the United States has all but stopped supplying assistance to Ukraine, Ukraine is doing reasonably well, holding Russian troops back. But Vladimir Putin is encouraged by rising energy prices and the easing of American sanctions on Russian oil. So this might go some way to explain why Russian attacks on Ukraine continue. It's just simply that the Kremlin doesn't see any reason to stop. And America's eye seems off the ball, as it were. Absolutely. It's so preoccupied with Iran. All we've been hearing from Washington is that they want to end this war, but there doesn't seem to be an obvious way of doing it. Vitaly Shevchenko there. You're listening to NewsHour from the BBC. I'm Paul Henley. There is a lot of attention still on a small cruise ship currently stuck in the mid-Atlantic because three people on board it have died of something called Hantavirus. And the World Health Organization has now said something significant, that the virus might have been spread person to person, something previously considered unlikely. Jake Rosemarine from Boston is a travel vlogger on board the MV Hondias cruise ship. He posted this message on Instagram. I normally wouldn't make a video like this, but I feel like I need to say something, so I wrote a few things down. I am currently on board the MV Hondias, and what's happening right now is very real for all of us here. We're not just a story. We're not just headlines. We're people, people with families, with lives, with people waiting for us at home. The BBC managed to get through to another passenger on board, a Jordanian travel vlogger called Kasim Hayto. He didn't want to do a recorded interview. He did send some notes and a producer read out what he wrote. The situation on the ship has been very calm. People are taking the situation seriously but without any panic, trying to keep social distancing and wearing masks to be safe. The leadership and captain on the ship are keeping us informed whenever they have new information. We are not obliged to do anything, but we're trying to follow the recommendations we received of limiting close contact with other passengers and sanitising our hands as much as possible. Our days have been close to normal, just waiting for authorities to find a solution. But morale on the ship is high and we're keeping ourselves busy with reading, watching movies, having hot drinks and that kind of thing. While it was really unfortunate losing some of our colleagues in this journey, from my point of view being on the ship, this story has been blown out of proportion. The situation is still unclear and we have to wait for more information to draw conclusions. Our hearts are with those who passed away and their families and we wish a speedy recovery to the sick people on board. Nika Alexander, manager of Health Emergencies Communication at the World Health Organisation, joined us earlier. Originally, the story was it was extremely hard to spread this virus person to person. I asked her whether that had changed. I think what my colleague was trying to clarify this morning is that it's possible and it's one of the possibilities we have to look at. This virus does sometimes spread person to person, looking at the number of people who've been affected, looking at the couple who were the first to be infected. It's possible. We have said this previously, and if you look up antivirus, you can see that sometimes it can spread between people, especially people who are in close contact, a healthcare worker managing a patient if they don't have the proper protection, or people who live together in close quarters. It's said to be spread originally by rodents. Does this indicate that people caught it before they got on board, that there were rats on board? What do we know? There are a lot of questions, right? It's exactly what we wonder about. And it's exactly those types of questions. Was it the person who embarked from Argentina, where we know that hentavirus is in some of the rodent populations? Was it something on some food that was brought in, and there were feces on some of the food unwittingly? Was it one of the stops the passengers made because this was a wildlife tour? Was it a stop they made and they interacted with animals then and were infected then? Or was it from another person? So those are all important questions that we're working on. We do what's called an epidemiological investigation, and we do that with experts from the countries that the people are from. What's the situation likely to be for those on board? Presumably they have to stay in their rooms in confined spaces. what's working? What is recommended, what good protocol is, is to stay distance from each other. As the clip from Kasim said, they are trying to do their best. They are wearing masks when possible. They're trying to get distance from each other. And that's in case it is passing person to person. He said that they're very calm. That's what we've heard as well, that they feel reassured. They're getting regular updates. And that's really important. People are anxious when they don't know what's going on. So it's very important that the ship has been keeping them informed about the situation. What about nations saying not here in terms of docking to let those who are most sick get off board? There's news in the last hour, I think, that some are going to be taken to the Netherlands. Well, there are two people who are sick. The others are fine. And it's absolutely for them that we are the most worried that they get the level of care they need so they don't become more sick. There's only a certain amount, certain level of care you can give on a ship. Obviously, you can get better care elsewhere. We have also heard, this is through a lot of coordination that has been ongoing, WHO has been deeply involved, that there is a plane managed by the Netherlands which will be evacuating those two most ill passengers. It hasn't happened yet. We're anxiously awaiting to hear that it's happened. I mean, are there rules? Are countries within their rights to say, no, you can't get off the ship here? Well, there actually are rules and there are countries have rights. you wouldn't want to be obliged to take a shipload of people that you're anxious about. The rules say, basically, it's in the international health regulations, which came from the rules of the sea, essentially, that if a country feels they're unable to manage the sick people, they don't have to take them. Now, of course, there's the question of what does unable to manage mean? But essentially, countries do have the right to say yes or no. And of course, we are reaching out to other countries and seeking countries to say yes, because the people on the ship are doing the best to not get ill. They don't seem to be ill and they should be allowed to get on with their lives. When people hear about fatal viruses, they're thinking we'll possibly go to epidemics, even pandemics in the wake of what happened with COVID. Is there a wider deadly potential for this particular virus, would you say? I think people, when they think deadly, means it spreads more easily. Just because a virus is deadly doesn't mean it spreads more easily. It does mean we're more concerned about it. And this is a virus that, from what we know, from what we've seen historically, and even from this outbreak, does not seem to spread easily from person to person. And that's always what we look at with the most attention. How easily does it spread to person to person? Do they have to be in really close contact or can somebody on the other side of the room catch it? That's what we're looking out for. And at the moment, it looks like it seems to be behaving more or less how hentavirus has behaved historically, which is it doesn't pass that easily from person to person. Nika Alexander, manager of health emergencies communication at the World Health Organization. Now, if you're in Brazil, you might already know there's a whole language associated with whistling. The most sophisticated users of that language go well beyond bird sounds or tunes, and a new WhatsApp messaging craze bears witness to the attraction of whistling. Thousands of people in Brazil participate daily in the sending of messages in which words and typing are banned. To get an understanding of the whistling phenomenon and the broader culture of whistling languages globally, I've been talking to Julien Meyer, who's a French linguist and author of A Worldwide Inquiry on Human Whistled Speech. I asked him first what he made of the WhatsApp whispering craze in Brazil. That's very interesting because this shows for me that whistling can be used for anything which is creative. The tunes with whistling is very precise for human beings, even more than with the voice. And it's used also for passing creativity through generations or through different means of communication. So it can be used for imitating speech, but also for other ways of communication like these groups. And you've written about the long history of whistled languages globally. Can you give us some examples? Yes, whistle speech is a way to imitate normal speech, but for other ways or other connections of communication, like distance communication in the mountain or in the forests. For example, I can speak in French saying, where are you? So, où es-tu in French? I can shout that, où es-tu, like that, or I can blow it like a whispering, which would be, où es-tu? But I can also whistle it and it looks like the whispering form You see I articulate the same words but while whistling And whistling is very particular because it very melodic So even if you imitate the normal voice, which is used to ask, where are you? It would sound melodic. It brings speech naturally to music. You mentioned communication in the mountains, and I think you've looked into whistling in the Himalayas in particular. Yes, there are some communications using whistling in the Himalayas, but also in the Atlas in Morocco or in many places where you have mountains in which people live and need also to communicate for their everyday life activities like shepherding or just localizing each other or calling for food or things like that. And in the Spanish Canary Islands, this is very important because it's the only remnant practice of a dead language, which was Berber language, which was before the colonization by the Spanish and other Europeans. So the practice of the language itself, which was a Berber language, died, but the whistled speech, which was in Berber before, passed to Spanish because the need to use it remained. And what is interesting is that there are many anecdotes about its use, like during Franco era, the local people were resisting to the Guardia Civil by whistling because the Guardia Civil, some of them were coming from another place in Spain, so they didn't understand what was whistled. So it was used as a mean to resist against domination in many places, not only in Canary Island. It's the same, for example, in Brazil, because we were speaking about Brazil. I've been working five years in Brazil in the Amazon, and people use it either to hide from other tribes or use it to hunt and not to be recognised as humans by animals. So it's also a way to disguise your presence as a human. French linguist Julien Meillet. Now this time tomorrow, NewsHour's Regine Vaidjanathan will be presenting the programme live, not from where I'm sitting now in Broadcasting House in London, but from the studios of our partner station, WYPR, in Baltimore in the US. Rajini's currently out and about gathering material and she's told us what to expect. Looking out across the Patapsco River, it's a beautiful sunny day. The water is lighting up in front of me as the sun hits it. And it's what we can't see anymore that is really striking because you may remember that it was two years ago in March that the city's iconic Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed after a container ship drove into it. And so here we can no longer see that iconic bridge, but we are going to be talking about the fallout from what happened to the bridge and particularly the workers who were on it, some of them who died and their family members. We've got a story about that and the immigration implications. we've also got an interview with Democratic Senator for Maryland Chris Van Hollen, it's an interesting one, we talked to him about Iran, he's pushing for a war powers resolution vote he believes that President Trump and his administration should have got congressional approval before taking military action against Iran we also ask him about the future of the Democratic Party, six months out from the midterms and I should say It's a really interesting conversation. He talks about the so-called Democratic Fight Club, which has sprung up within the party. A range of stories, all of that coming to you live from WYPR on Wednesday's edition of NewsHour with me, Regine Vaidyanathan. NewsHour tomorrow. This is the BBC World Service. I'm Paul Henley with NewsHour. Now, Iron Maiden is one of the world's biggest heavy metal bands. To date, they've played more than 2,500 live shows across 64 countries, and later this week, a new documentary called Iron Maiden Burning Ambition, covering their ups and downs of a five-decade career is being released in cinemas worldwide. NewsHour's Uzman Azad sat down with the band's lead singer, Bruce Dickinson. Well, it was a decision that we made collectively, collectively that do we really you know at our age want to be on on on camera as talking heads talking about ourselves we thought that the music should do the talking the footage that we've got a lot of archive footage that people have never seen let that do the talking and then let the fans dictate the story some of the fans you have big names like javier bardem yeah and then to people that we've had on the World Service. That's great because it puts the lie to this idea that, which obviously we've never subscribed to and our fans never subscribed to, but the external world, external to the universe of Iron Maiden, I think rushes to judgment about who listens to this music and why. I mean, everybody comes from a position, oh, well, obviously it's this, if they happen to be from the Christian right, or obviously it's this if they're a feminist or obviously it's this. And the truth is it's none of those things. And you have to kind of get over yourself and immerse yourself in what we do and realise that if there was ever a band that was inclusive, it's us. This documentary talks about the gruelling schedule. I think you talk about at one point, you look down at the sort of the touring schedule, you sort of see six shows in a row, a day off, then five days in a row and a day off. And I just wondered, you know, looking back now, I mean, you were young. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that obviously fueled you through it. Yeah, no, I mean, when you're young, you can tolerate that level of sustained abuse of your body. But the one thing you can't measure or quantify, because it's all new to you, is what effect it has on your soul, frankly. And the one thing I wanted to do, I realized, was create. And there comes a point when you're on the treadmill of just, you know, when you become, when music almost becomes like industrial. Yeah. You know, so it's just like, oh, we're doing six, then we're doing ten, then we're doing blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's relentless. And I was like, where's the creativity? Where's the time for reflection or creativity and all this kind of stuff? And yeah, so that deeply affected me. So I thought maybe it's not worth it. Maybe if this is going to be the rest of my life, maybe I should just quit, you know. So I did think about it for about six months. Can I talk to you about some of the band's varied songs? The themes of the song work all around the world. songs like Run to the Hill, which is a song that a lot of people can look into and see about the story about power and colonialism. Do you think bands are willing to really say something? You're not a political band, of course, but your music has messages. It's stories. We've pillaged quite a few poems. Yes. You know, Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner is a cautionary ecological tale written back in the day. And if you read into it and read what it's actually saying, it's extraordinarily relevant right now. Two minutes to midnight is a warning about, hey, this is the ambivalence of what war is. War is horrible and evil and nasty, but sometimes it has to be done. So how do you square that circle? They're not easy questions to answer. There is no answer. There is no answer. That's the whole point. As if you're going to be kind of semi grown up about it, you have to turn around and say there are some things that happen that are not fair and they will continue to happen. The only way that this stuff will stop is if humanity collectively has a personality transplant. And we ain't showing any sign of that any time soon. We evolve at a snail's pace. Meanwhile, we've got AI, iPads and nuclear weapons. Can I also talk to you about metal as a genre? Yeah. Are you optimistic there is going to be another Iron Maiden that's going to come down the track? Is it even possible? Well, I would hate to predict anything because I love the fact that one of the few things we have as human beings is unpredictability. It's our superpower that even AI can't predict our unpredictability because AI only understands what it's already been programmed with. So if somebody comes out with something that's really left field, it's like, oh, wow, that's unique. That's authentic. You know, that's all of those things. So I'm not looking for anything at the moment. At the moment, I'm just looking for us to be the best we can be. I hope that in the world of as it progresses, if it does progress, but, you know, as time marches on, shall we put it that way, that people can just derive the enjoyment and thrill of seeing and experiencing a really fierce live band. And that's increasingly difficult because, you know, government councils, whoever it is, you know, and rents, rates, all the rest of it are conspiring against the kind of cheap venues that need to proliferate in order to release the power that is pent up in an entire generation. Fortunately, human beings are unpredictable and rebellious. That was Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson speaking to NewsHour's Usman Azad. Thank you very much for listening to this edition of the programme. Bye-bye for now.