The Interview

“Private communication is a fundamental human right for a reason, because when those with power over you have access to your intimate thoughts and your communication, they use those to punish you. They can use them to persecute you. They can use them to shut you up.” Megha Mohan speaks to Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal Foundation, which runs the encrypted messaging app Signal. Its end...

BBC special correspondent James Naughtie speaks to former Governor of California, Jerry Brown. He was first elected governor in 1974, succeeding Ronald Reagan, and went on to serve two eight-year terms in office, separated by nearly three decades. Over the course of his public life, he met every US president from John F. Kennedy to Donald Trump. Now retired on the California land where his ancesto...

“There aren't enough lawyers and judges on the planet if journalists are silent, because abuses of power just don't come to light, in my experience, without this relationship between a free media, fair courts, fair trials, robust judges, investigators, the police and so on. Without journalists there'd be no human rights protection and the rule of law.” Anna Holligan speaks to human rights lawyer a...

“I do not want the United Nations of New York, Geneva or Vienna to be an ivory tower, a diplomatic ivory tower. I want to see the UN not of power and privilege, but the UN of service and impact. That is the UN I want see.” James Copnall speaks to Olara Otunnu, Ugandan diplomat, lawyer and former Foreign Minister. He has spent decades working at the highest levels of international diplomacy. He has...

“He had no guardrails. He had no rules. He told Donald Trump, you know, when criticised, attack, attack, attack, deny, deny deny, always go on the offensive, never apologise. And Trump, when he met Roy Cohn, he began mimicing how he talked.” BBC Newsnight presenter Paddy O’Connell, speaks to author Kai Bird about Roy Cohn, Donald Trump’s former lawyer and mentor. Cohn rose to prominence as Senator...

“I think there’s been this underlying frustration among the youth of India for a very long time. If we look at the unemployment data, India currently has the highest unemployment rate in the last 40 years, and even when it comes to education, every year there’s not been one single government examination where the paper isn’t leaked, or the paper or the exam isn’t cancelled. So people are really fr...

Justin Rowlatt speaks to Estelle Brachlianoff, chief executive of environmental firm Veolia. The corporation’s origins can be traced all the way back to 19th Century France, when it was established as a water company during the country’s industrial revolution. More than a century-and-a-half later, it’s grown to become one of the world’s leading operators of environmental services, working across f...

Ione Wells speaks to Roelf Meyer, South Africa’s new ambassador to the United States. In the 1990s, Meyer was one of the leading negotiators in the talks that helped bring apartheid to an end. Now he takes up his new post amid a serious rupture in relations with the US President Trump has cut aid, expelled the previous South African ambassador and offered refugee status to white Afrikaners he says...

“I can tell you here and now, those are exactly the words he said. I've only ever had two calls on the line with Prince Charles at any stage of my life. I was hyper alert to what he was saying, and those are precisely the words that he said, and I promise that to you now. Genuinely, that is what he said.” Laura Kuenssberg speaks to Earl Spencer, brother of Diana, Princess of Wales. Diana was one o...

“Not just African musician. Everybody, even journalist, even president, even football player, even promoter. We need to do it for those people who suffer, who don’t have food or security. We need everybody to denounce it. Speak louder, talk more loudly about the situation. Not just for Congo, but all Africa.” Jewel Kiriungi speaks to Congolese musician Fally Ipupa, one of Africa’s biggest music st...

‘I compare the erosion of international humanitarian law with bankruptcy it happens gradually at first and then all of a sudden instantly. This is what is happening with the Geneva Conventions at the moment. You look away, you look away, you look away, you increase your tolerance level until all of a sudden you realize we've crossed the line. We've crossed the red line, and we've done so collectiv...

“This is one of the exact aspect of hybrid warfare of Russia… They are targeting us specifically to create dissensions, to create and to prop up artificially some voices in our societies that otherwise would be quite marginal and create dissensions. So they want to attack us and make sure that our democracies are more fragile, because the more fragile we are, the less we're able to counter their a...

Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s chief international correspondent, meets Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi as the Taliban seeks greater international recognition. The Taliban returned to power five years ago but Russia is still the only country to have formally recognised their rule. Afghanistan is pushing for stronger diplomatic relations, but their treatment of women and girls remains one...

“I had hired a CEO for the last two years. The company was at a place where revenue had plateaued. I wasn’t someone who could look at a spreadsheet 50 tabs wide and tell my CFO what to do. I was definitely out of my league and I didn’t like that job, and a lot of different things happened before we ended up filing for bankruptcy.” Leanna Byrne speaks to Sophia Amoruso, founder of online fashion re...

“We don’t have another way for surviving, because we are an independent state, it's our territory, it's our land, it’s our culture, it’s our history, and we must fight to prevent the full occupation by the Russian Federation our territory.” Dan Johnson speaks to Vadym Skibitsky, deputy chief of the GUR, Ukraine’s military intelligence service, about the ongoing war with Russia. Formed shortly afte...

“Let's go back to the timeframe with the internet building out. We didn’t have an issue that the internet 20 years later is not a valuable utility… If you don't have access to a smartphone, try to get into a sporting event or a concert - it’s not going to happen. That's the internet at its backbone. So artificial intelligence will be the same. It's going to be table stakes for everything that we d...

“People just wanted to own the way they worked, but with that comes these institutional structures that have been built around the history of work that doesn’t allow for benefits programs or paid time off, or insurance. So there were all these things I knew that weighed on me. It wasn’t a perfect system.” The BBC’s Sarah Rogers speaks to Leah Solivan, founder and former chief executive of TaskRabb...

BBC Newsnight presenter Paddy O’Connell speaks to Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu about why he thinks liberal democracy is in crisis, and how artificial intelligence could make it worse. Daron argues that liberal democracy worked because people were given a say in how they were governed and then benefited from their country’s economy as it prospered. But western governments have made...

“For 80 years, we only have men [lead the UN] and I think it is not about women because she is a woman … The idea is a woman because she has the experience, the leadership, the capacity, the knowledge, the ability to do things that need to be done…So I hope that that will be something that members could understand that it will be fantastic. But, to be honest, I'm not sure that every country is rea...

“It's a distortion of real pressures. When I'm analysing trends around men…they are wanting to lean into what being a man means. In many cases strength, loyalty, protection. Those are not bad values. Those are being exploited, weaponised, and redirected in order to either sell a product or sell an idea.” Marianna Spring and Matt Shea speak to Kristina Wilfore, Director at Reset Tech, about their n...

“More Chinese companies are put out of business by other Chinese companies. Chinese companies are not put out of business because of Western companies, so this whole competition is not, from a Chinese guy's mind, like a US-China competition. It’s more ‘how do I survive this gym?’ because it's damn hard to keep staying alive at home. That in turn makes you very competitive in the rest of the world....

“Sometimes we confuse activity with impact. And here I think the way we measure results should be different. How many lives has the UN saved? How many people has the UN helped to live out of poverty? How many people have we prevented from conflict? How many people were we able to support?” The BBC’s Anne Soy speaks to María Fernanda Espinosa, Ecuador’s former foreign minister and a candidate to be...

“I think Pac was actually traumatised by the poverty. You know, poverty can be very, very traumatic. Having no lights, having no food from time to time, having no clothes while you’re going to school, and bumming clothes. Them stories, it was real. That really happened to Pac. Pac was sensitive, so he felt things deeply.” The BBC’s Shaimaa Khalil speaks to Mopreme Shakur, step-brother of iconic ra...

“Was it good for our Constitution? Was it good for the American people? Was it good for my dad's legacy? No, on all counts. It was not. All I know is that I'm grateful that he did it for me.” BBC Newsnight presenter Paddy O’Connell speaks to Hunter Biden, son of former president Joe Biden, about his father’s controversial decision to give him a presidential pardon at the end of his one term in off...

“[This weather] is a new norm, and we need to make sure that we are prepared to deal with that…these extreme wildfires put more responsibility onto improving our forecasting tools to support the brigades, to support communities.” Victoria Gill speaks to Professor Celeste Saulo, head of the World Meteorological Organisation, about the extreme weather events making headlines in recent months. She sa...