The Interview

Zeinab Badawi talks to Amos Gilad, Policy Director at the Israeli Ministry of Defence. Is the Arab Spring a blessing or a disaster for Israel? Upheaval in the Arab world, especially in Syria, means political realities are still evolving in the Middle East. For years Israel has seen itself as living in a hostile neighbourhood, its borders tense and prone to bouts of violence. Hamas rules in Gaza an...

Sheikh Hasina has been Prime Minister of Bangladesh for the last three and a half years. It’s her second term in office and throughout her time at the top she’s attracted controversy and criticism in equal measure. Bangladesh is densely populated, desperately poor and riven with corruption and political violence. Back in 2009 Sheikh Hasina vowed to clean up government and heal the country’s divisi...

At the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 a diminutive Moroccan runner named Nawal El Moutawakel won the 400 metres hurdles and so became the first Arab and Muslim woman to win Olympic gold. She says her victory changed her life forever and propelled her towards a career in sports administration and as a passionate advocate of women in sport, especially in the Islamic world. She's now an influential mem...

Six of the world's ten fastest growing economies are in Sub- Saharan Africa. The World Bank predicts a decade of African growth which Europe can only dream of, but how realistic is the excitable talk of economic transformation in the world’s poorest continent? Stephen Sackur speaks to Arnold Ekpe, CEO of Ecobank, which boasts eight million customers across 32 Sub-Saharan nations. As economic oppor...

More than 10,000 athletes are about to compete at the London Olympics. The spotlight will certainly be on them but one former champion, Jonathan Edwards, will take a particular interest. He won Olympic gold in the triple jump and his world record in the event has stood secure for 17 years. On present form no triple jumper to compete in London looks close to breaking it. He was also part of London'...

Baaba Maal is maintaining a West African tradition: he is an internationally renowned musician with a strong political voice, like Fela Kuti and Youssou N'Dour before him. His campaigning touches on sensitive subjects, from women's rights to HIV and climate change. Africa is currently a jarring mix of rapid economic growth and life-threatening poverty. As the continent changes, is the music changi...

Stephen Sackur speaks to the renowned Harvard academic James Robinson. In a recent book, written together with Daron Acemoglu, he tries to answer one of the most basic questions of global economics and politics: why do some nations thrive while others fail? What does Norway have that Mali lacks? There are of course multiple answers based on physical geography, resources and cultural differences, b...

Stephen Sackur speaks to a scientist of rare distinction. Jocelyn Bell Burnell was a key member of the team which discovered pulsars and neutron stars in the late 1960s. She became one of the world’s most renowned astrophysicists - remarkable for the originality of her research, but also for being one of the few prominent women in her discipline. Throughout her career she's blazed a trail for wome...

Is Rwanda's president Paul Kagame in serious danger of losing the international community's goodwill? He has been accused of autocratic behaviour and of being unrealistic about the prospects for an economic transformation of Rwanda, a country still haunted by the ghosts of genocide. Perhaps most damagingly, a recent UN report claimed that the Rwandan government is breaking UN sanctions by backing...

Stephen Sackur talks to a member of the Brussels political elite, the EU Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht. His job is to promote Europe's trade agenda around the world - but who is listening when the EU itself is staring over an economic abyss? Europe's politicians resemble the cast of a third rate disaster movie... trapped in a Eurozone crisis from which there is no obvious means of escape. Can...

Zeinab Badawi talks to the musician and political activist Femi Kuti, son of the late, legendary afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti. As Africa's most populous nation and one of its biggest oil producers, Nigeria is a giant on the African stage. But in terms of prosperity it has never fulfilled the expectations of its people. Femi Kuti is a constant thorn in the side of the Nigerian authorities and uses hi...

The election of a Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi as president of Egypt will have an impact not only on Egypt but also elsewhere in the Middle East. Nowhere more so perhaps than in Gaza. There, Hamas, which is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, has ruled for five years. Zeinab Badawi speaks to Ghazi Hamad, deputy foreign minister for Hamas in Gaza. At loggerheads with th...

The British Government has promised action to deal with the scandal at Barclays. The bank has been fined for trying to fix the interest rate at which banks lend to each other - London Interbank Offered Rate - or Libor. Yet again it's the lack of regulation that is being blamed for a financial problem. Sarah Montague talks to Professor Niall Ferguson who argues that the world is responding in the w...

Electoral politics is a blood sport and some of the toughest fighters in the game are the campaign strategists who hone and sell their candidates' message. Lynton Crosby is widely regarded as a master in the dark arts of political campaigning. He ran winning election campaigns in his native Australia for former prime minister John Howard. In the UK, he twice helped Boris Johnson win the London May...

Stephen Sackur is in the capital of Denmark, Copenhagen, which for the past six tumultuous months has held the presidency of the European Union. In that time, the number of Eurozone countries seeking an emergency financial bailout has risen to five. On the eve of yet another crisis summit, EU leaders face decisions that could make, or break the common currency. Stephen Sackur talks to Helle Thorni...

Stephen Sackur talks to Gehad El-Haddad, an adviser to the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party. Mohamed Morsi has made history by becoming Egypt's first freely-elected president, but how much power has he won? The image of tens of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters savouring victory in Tahrir Square can't disguise the fact that Egypt is still governed by a military clique. With...

With the London Olympics just weeks away, athletes are completing their final preparations - and that means fine tuning the mind as well as the body. In elite sport the title 'head coach' increasingly refers to the specialist hired to get inside the athlete's head to instil a winning mentality. Stephen Sackur talks to the psychiatrist Dr Steve Peters - a consultant to the British Olympic cycling t...

The 2012 Cannes Film Festival was criticised when all 22 films in the competition were directed by men. But Hollywood is not much better - a recent study found that less than 10 per cent of its directors were women. So why are there so few women film-makers? Sarah Montague puts that question to Beeban Kidron, one of the few women to have made the big time. She is perhaps best-known for directing t...

The Greek election in June 2012 has saved Europe from economic and financial meltdown - for now. No-one in Europe believes the combined currency, banking and sovereign debt trauma is over. And right across the continent, politicians are struggling to answer a simple question: how does Europe find a way back to sustainable economic growth? Stephen Sackur talks to Labour's business spokesman Chuka U...

Israel's secret service, the Mossad, is regarded as one of the most resourceful and ruthless intelligence agencies in the world. But are Israel's top spies on the same page as the country's politicians when it comes to an assessment of the threat posed by Iran? The question was prompted by Meir Dagan, director of Mossad until a year and a half ago. Just months after retiring he said an Israeli str...

Wayne McGregor is known for pushing boundaries in an art form usually associated with traditional entertainment. Once known as the bad boy of ballet, he has been the resident choreographer in one of the dance world’s pillar of establishment, the Royal Ballet in London’s Covent Garden, for six years. He continues to challenge his audiences and his dancers to the limit, constantly concocting new way...

Katya Adler talks to Dr Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA. Iran's nuclear power programme has been a source of international tension for the past decade. At no point has it been able to shrug off the suspicion that its pursuit of nuclear energy is also an effort to make nuclear weapons. Iran insists it has no such ambitions but many of the world's major...

HARDtalk's Katya Adler speaks to the chairman of the Police Federation in England and Wales, Paul McKeever. The police in Britain, used to being revered, respected and admired at home and abroad, find themselves under a heavy black cloud. With allegations of bribery and corruption denting the public's trust, the force now also faces dramatic cuts to its budget and changes to its structure. Paul Mc...

Could we soon see a cure for HIV/Aids? Francoise Barre-Sinoussi thinks so. She's the Nobel Prize-winner who helped first identify the virus 30 years ago. She argues that the need to pour money into fighting one of the world's most deadly diseases is as great as ever. Already nearly 30 million have died from it. But with budgets being cut, can we afford more expensive research? (Image: Francoise Ba...

Stephen Sackur talks to the newsmakers and personalities from across the globe. Hardtalk is in Margate, a traditional English seaside town, home to the new Turner Contemporary art gallery. Stephen Sackur speaks to Tracey Emin, the artist of international renown who was raised in Margate and has a major exhibition based in her old home town. Her work has always been deeply personal - a frank explor...