The Interview

The Covid-19 crisis is not only a threat to people's health and wellbeing, it is already having severe financial consequences, which many fear will result in a crisis of the kind we saw over a decade ago. Zeinab Badawi interviews Ian Goldin, a professor on globalisation and development, who six years ago predicted that the next financial crash would be caused by a pandemic. Will his prophesy come...

The US political landscape has shifted dramatically in the last few weeks. The Democratic Party’s search for the best candidate to beat Donald Trump in November now seems likely to end with the nomination of a 77-year-old establishment politician, written off as ‘past it’ just a month ago. Is Joe Biden really the best the Democrats can do? And could the coronavirus crisis change everything? (Photo...

Zeinab Badawi is in Johannesburg, interviewing William Kentridge. He is considered one of the world’s greatest living artists. He is versatile, hard-hitting and his talent spans many different genres. How has South Africa’s difficult, violent and racist past influenced his work? (Photo: William Kentridge, Rome, 2015 Credit: Stefano Montesi/Corbis/Getty Images)

President Emmanuel Macron’s bold promise to break the political mould in France has collided with reality. His reform plans, from tax to pensions, have stirred a backlash against what protesters call his neo-liberal elitism. And as his internal problems have mounted, so too have doubts about his ability to be the EU’s visionary leader. HARDtalk's Stephen Sackur interviews Gabriel Attal, Minister f...

David Tait appeared to have a perfect life: all the trappings of a successful and highly lucrative career in the City of London, a wife and young family at home. But on the inside, he was in turmoil. He suffered sexual abuse as a child, which had catastrophic consequences into his adult life. After a breakdown that nearly cost him everything, he’s dedicated himself to increasing the awareness of a...

Hardtalk is in Cape Town to speak to Mmusi Maimane, who stood down last October as leader of the main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance. In his first major interview to an international broadcaster since he left the DA, Zeinab Badawi asks Mmusi Maimane what his resignation says about the state of politics in South Africa and his ambitions for the new Movement for One South Africa which he...

"Get ready" is the message from health experts fighting COVID-19, the coronavirus. At least 80,000 people are already infected in more than 40 countries, and that number is expected to rise. Is the World Health Organisation moving fast enough? We speak to WHO adviser Professor David Heymann.

HARDtalk’s Stephen Sackur speaks to Dr Yasser Abu Jamei, director of Gaza’s biggest mental health program. The past few days have seen rising tension in Gaza – Islamist militants fired rockets into Israel; the Israelis responded with air strikes aimed at the Islamic Jihad group. Hardly unusual and certainly not the stuff of international headlines but that in itself is telling. In Gaza conflict is...

In the United States all citizens are equal in the eyes of the law, but having money and power helps if you need legal difficulties to disappear. HARDtalk’s Stephen Sackur speaks to lawyer Alan Dershowitz. He's one of America’s most high profile and outspoken lawyers – his long list of past clients includes Claus von Bulow, OJ Simpson, Jeffrey Epstein and, yes, Donald Trump. Prof Dershowitz joined...

Tarana Burke first coined the phrase MeToo, long before the Harvey Weinstein case. She continues to reach out to marginalised women and girls. What difference has the MeToo movement made to the bigger picture? (Photo: Tarana Burke at New York Fashion Week. Credit: Getty Images)

The designer catwalk and the glossy magazine cover are powerful cultural signifiers. Top models who occupy those spaces are deemed to have a look that attracts and sells. But how diverse is that look? How inclusive? Stephen Sackur interviews Halima Aden, a supermodel who challenged a host of stereotypes. She is a refugee from Somalia’s civil war; she’s Muslim and follows a modest dress code. Hers...

There are international laws and norms designed to prohibit states from bumping off their enemies, internal or external. But look around the world, and its clear those laws are being violated, often with impunity. Stephen Sackur interviews Agnes Callamard, a renowned human rights investigator who serves as the UN Special Rapporteur on extra judicial killing. Given the scale of the problem, have he...

Remember the time when political discourse was founded on those quaint concepts - facts, evidence, and expertise? Now it seems partisanship infects every corner of the realm of ideas, according to Paul Krugman. Stephen Sackur interviews the Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist, whose latest book suggests America’s political and economic future is threatened by zombie ideas pe...

Like many of Europe’s long-established parties of the left, the UK Labour Party is in big trouble. In last December’s election, Labour wasn’t just beaten, it was humiliated, losing its grip on working-class heartlands in the midlands and the North. Stephen Sackur interviews Len McCluskey, who will have a big say in the choice of the party’s next leader. He leads the Unite Union, which is Labour’s...

For a generation of black South African artists who came of age in the apartheid era, art and activism were intertwined; the liberation struggle was their life force. Now, a quarter of a century after Mandela became president, things are more complicated. Stephen Sackur speaks to John Kani, a giant of South African theatre. His career spans five decades of acting and writing. He’s been in Hollywoo...

Ian Blackford is the Scottish Nationalist MP for a vast tract of north-west Scotland, and the leader of the SNP’s 48-strong band of Westminster MPs. He is a prominent champion of the cause of Scottish independence, a cause which represents one of the biggest challenges facing prime minister Boris Johnson over the next five years. Back in 2014, Scotland voted by 55% to 45% to remain in the UK. At t...

China's rise to economic superpower status has not brought with it an opening up of politics or culture. Far from it. The Communist Party has intensified its efforts to suppress dissent of all kinds. Stephen Sackur speaks to China's most internationally-famous artist, Ai Weiwei, who now lives in the UK and not Beijing. He's a refugee and a migrant of sorts, so how has that affected his creative ou...

Stephen Sackur speaks to the accused computer hacker Lauri Love. For nations, corporations and all of us as individuals, the age of the internet has heightened vulnerability. Information and data - the most valuable of all commodities - are at risk from hackers, motivated by greed or national or ideological interest. Lauri Love was, from childhood, a gifted computer geek who joined a so-called hac...

Britain is at an historic fork in the road - taking the UK in a new direction, and maybe Europe too. Many on both sides didn't think it would come to this, even after Britain's Brexit vote in 2016. But here we are. HARDtalk speaks to Jean Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission through the Brexit drama. What will Brexit mean for Britain and the European project?

Since September 2019, bush fires in Australia have consumed 10 million hectares of land – an area almost the size of England. People have died, homes have been destroyed. The annual season of fires has begun earlier and lasted longer than ever before. Many see it as evidence of climate change, though the government says it’s not as simple as that. Condemned by its Pacific neighbours for inaction,...

It’s 75 years since allied troops entered the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. The very word Auschwitz still stirs a unique level of horror. It was the place where Hitler’s genocide of European Jewry was industrialised with evil precision. Stephen Sackur speaks to Mindu Hornick, one of the remaining survivors. Now 90 years old, she continues to speak of the past in the hope that we will learn from he...

Perhaps it’s misleading to describe the unfolding events in the US Senate as the ‘impeachment trial’ of Donald Trump. After all, this is a process which may well avoid witness testimony, exclude key documents, and involves jurors who drew their conclusions long ago. Nonetheless, it remains an historic moment, likely to have a major impact on US politics. HARDtalk’s Stephen Sackur speaks to Republi...

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has promised to take steps to protect military personnel from what he describes as vexatious legal claims. It’s a controversial stance as armed conflicts, from Northern Ireland to Iraq, have thrown up serious allegations of criminal wrongdoing by soldiers. Former Royal Marine Alexander Blackman was convicted of murder while serving in Afghanistan in 2011. He served...

The British film and TV producer Tony Garnett died last week, aged 83. In 2016 Stephen Sackur spoke to him about his life and pioneering work which began in the 1960s. The subject matter he tackled included homelessness, illegal abortion and police corruption, and uncovered dark corners in British life. But how much of his motivation came from the dark corners in his own life?

Who polices the shadowy world of private intelligence? HARDtalk’s Sarah Montague speaks to Seth Freedman, who was an investigator for Black Cube, and gathered information for its client, the disgraced media mogul Harvey Weinstein. Does he regret what he did?