The Interview

Zeinab Badawi speaks to Dr Gwen Adshead, a forensic psychiatrist and psychotherapist who has spent more than three decades trying to treat some of the UK’s most violent offenders. Why does she urge compassion and understanding for those who many brand as simply evil?

Stephen Sackur speaks to Pinchas Goldschmidt, who was chief rabbi of Moscow until he fled Russia after the Ukraine invasion and left his post. His fate has exposed the scale of wider Jewish flight from Russia, and divisions within the Jewish community. Why is this war deepening Jewish anxiety?

Stephen Sackur speaks to Olga Rudenko, chief editor of the Kyiv Independent - set up by Ukrainian journalists to hold their government to account. Is there room for independent journalism when Ukraine is in a fight for survival against Russian aggression?

Stephen Sackur speaks to the artist Sir Peter Blake, whose work came to define the freshness and optimism of the 1960s. Now aged 90, he is still painting. What keeps his creativity alive?

Stephen Sackur is in Riga to speak to the Prime Minister of Latvia, Krišjānis Kariņš. Latvia is now an established member of the EU and NATO, but Putin’s Ukraine invasion has revived fears of Russian expansionism. Three decades on from the collapse of the Soviet Union, is Latvia still vulnerable?

Humans face a series of interlinked existential challenges. How do we feed a global population heading towards ten billion? Can it be done without degrading ecosystems and exacerbating climate change to a calamitous extent? Stephen Sackur interviews writer and environmental activist George Monbiot, who has spent decades addressing these questions and framing radical answers. Why are so many politi...

According to research in the US and the UK, roughly one in 100 may be transgender. But the fact that the debate about transgender rights has become a political battleground isn’t driven so much by the numbers but more by conflicting ideologies. Stephen Sackur asks author and journalist Shon Faye if all the attention on issues of sex, gender and identity is making it easier to be trans or not. This...

Stephen Sackur speaks to the former First Vice President of Afghanistan Amrullah Saleh, now a leader of the resistance dedicated to overthrowing the Taliban. A year after the Islamists returned to power, Afghanistan is in the grip of repression and starvation. Is resistance a viable option?

There are some human experiences which most of us find it very hard to get our heads around. In 2019, Stephen Sackur spoke to Albert Woodfox, who experienced the unimaginable torment of more than four decades in solitary confinement, in a tiny cell in one of America’s most notorious prisons. He was the victim of ingrained racism and brutality inside America’s system of criminal justice. He was rel...

Stephen Sackur is in Stratford-upon-Avon, interviewing Gregory Doran, artistic director emeritus of the Royal Shakespeare Company. More than 400 years after his death, Shakespeare’s words and stories live on, transcending languages and borders. Why do we continue to make much ado about Shakespeare?

Zeinab Badawi is at the Firstsite gallery in Colchester to speak to acclaimed contemporary British artists the Singh Twins. Their work combines Eastern and Western traditions with sharp political comment. What inspires their artistic vision?

In an interview recorded in 2021, Stephen Sackur speaks to one of the past century's most influential environmentalists, James Lovelock. He introduced us to the Gaia hypothesis – the idea that our planet and all the life on it are part of one dynamic, self-regulating system. At the age of 101, Lovelock still had big thoughts about the future of life on Earth. Have we humans sown the seeds of our o...

Stephen Sackur speaks to South Africa’s controversial populist politician Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters. Allegations of political corruption, power cuts and mass unemployment are pushing South Africa to the brink of chaos. Could one of Africa’s richest nations be consumed by insurrectionist violence?

Stephen Sackur speaks to Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, and an influential advocate of the global transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. Has that green transition been hampered or hastened by the Ukraine war and Europe’s deepening energy crisis?

Stephen Sackur interviews the General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, Sharan Burrow. There are signs of deepening worker discontent around the world; inflation is outstripping wages, and global corporations stand accused of putting profits before people, while many governments see organised labour as a threat. Have workers lost their faith in collective action?

Sarah Montague speaks to Afrobeats musician Omah Lay. With its roots in the social activist Afrobeat music pioneered by Fela Kuti, is there a universal message in the music of this young Nigerian singer-songwriter? (Photo: Omah Lay talks to Sarah Montague)

The conflict in Ethiopia between the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front and government forces is one of many challenges to the country’s stability. Now, there is a glimmer of hope, with both sides saying they are willing to start efforts to end the war. Zeinab Badawi speaks to Meaza Ashenafi, the Chief Justice of the Federal Supreme Court of Ethiopia. What are the prospects for peace and justice i...

Twenty-five years ago, almost one and a half million Christians lived in Iraq. Now there are around a quarter of a million, and after years of war and communal violence many of them have been displaced from their ancestral homes. Can anything be done to reverse this trend toward extinction? Stephen Sackur speaks to Archbishop Bashar Matti Warda of Erbil, home to the largest remaining Christian com...

Stephen Sackur speaks to Nury Turkel, a prominent Uyghur activist in exile and chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. He is a key leader in the effort to pressure China to end the repression of the Uyghurs. But is his campaign doomed to fail? (Photo: Nury Turkel in the Hardtalk studio)

The fractures in American society are widening, over guns, abortion, education and more. But the deepest, most traumatic fracture is surely over race. The US is post-slavery, post-segregation, but definitely not post-racism. Stephen Sackur speaks to Ibram X. Kendi, an influential writer and academic, who argues the only way to not be racist is to be actively anti-racist - a message he says childre...

Steve Thompson is a World Cup-winning England rugby player whose brain has been irreparably damaged by years of collisions. His wife Steph helps him deal with a life blighted by early-onset dementia. What happens when the game just isn’t worth it?

When the UK handed Hong Kong back to China 25 years ago, the last words of the departing British Governor to the people of the territory were: “Now Hong Kong people are to run Hong Kong. That is the promise. And that is the unshakeable destiny.” Sarah Montague speaks to Lord Patten, the man who made that pledge, to ask if that promise has been broken - and if the UK could have done more to honour...

Stephen Sackur speaks to K. Shanmugam, Singapore’s minister of home affairs. Economically open, socially conservative and highly politically controlled, Singapore has thrived in the era of globalisation, but could rising US/China tensions force it to take sides?

Stephen Sackur speaks to China thinktank founder and sometime government adviser Henry Huiyao Wang. From its strategic partnership with Putin’s Russia, to its draconian and economically damaging Covid policy, is Beijing making calls which expose its vulnerabilities?

Stephen Sackur speaks to João Vale de Almeida, the EU’s Ambassador to the UK, who is at the sharp end of the bitter fight between Boris Johnson’s government and Brussels over Northern Ireland. If Britain backs out of the Brexit deal and the EU retaliates, how toxic could things get?