The Interview

“I do believe that climate change is one of the most central issues facing humanity…but eventually I feel that technology, which is driving climate change efforts, will triumph over drilling things out of the ground.”

Leanna Byrne speaks to Sumant Sinha, the founder of ReNew, one of India's largest renewable energy companies about why he thinks green and clean energy will win out.

Sinha began his career in finance, working in New York and London, before walking away from the corporate world to make a bet on renewable energy. He founded his company in India...

“This is a legitimate concern of South Africans, where there’s illegal foreigners, people with no paperwork. No country in the world allows that to happen. Why should we? Our message is very simple. We say, South Africa is open for our brothers on the continent, but come here legitimately. Come here like a civilised human being that wants to come and contribute towards our country.”

Waihiga Mwaura speaks to Gayton McKenzie, South Africa’s Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture and leader of the Patriotic Alliance, a party that has built much of its support on a hardli...

‘Their love was so innocent, so sweet, so organic and we just wanted them to end up together because even they knew that some of the queer films always end in tragedy and they were worried that something like that's going to happen but that didn't happen and so people were really happy with it.’ Nikki Bedi speaks to Rohan Kanawade, the acclaimed director whose debut feature Cactus Pears or Sabar Bonda, made history as the first Marathi-language film to premiere at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. It also became the first Indian drama to win the festival's International Gran...

“Due to geopolitical divides, countries are having second thoughts about non-proliferation or their non-proliferation obligations, in the sense that many countries were relying or are still relying on nuclear umbrellas which they might feel are not so protective as they used to be in the past… Without wishing to exaggerate things, there is a perception that the nuclear factor is back on the table and it is growing in its relevance in terms of decision making, in terms of what nations do.”

Rob Young speaks to Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The...

“We all need to be speaking up about it. Not just the survivors. And we put so much burden on the people who've actually suffered the most, the most vulnerable among us.”

Naga Munchetty speaks to Amy Wallace, co-author of Virginia Giuffre’s memoir Nobody's Girl. Giuffre accused the then Prince Andrew, and late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, of sexual abuse. The former prince, now Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, told Newsnight in 2019 that he did not remember meeting Giuffre, and he has strenuously denied any wrongdoing. Virginia Giuffre's father has also denied all allegations of abuse.

The memoir...

“One of the things that’s fascinating about him simply as a historical study is the recognition that shamelessness is a superpower, and he refuses to be shamed in almost any action that he takes. He also realised that he doesn’t have to abide by the US system, which is primarily norms and not laws. He is testing them in a way they have never been tested before.” Paddy O’Connell speaks to Maggie Haberman, White House correspondent for The New York Times and co-author of Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. Maggie gives her take on Tr...

“The biggest risk in motion pictures is to not take a risk. You have to be putting it out there and offering people something new, and that's what will get them out of their houses.”

Katie Razzall speaks to Oscar-winning filmmaker Christopher Nolan.

The 55-year-old, whose directing credits include Inception, Interstellar and Oppenheimer, is widely considered one of the 21st century’s most influential filmmakers.

Born in London in 1970, his career began in the mid-1990s, when he would proofread scripts, operate cameras and direct for corporate information films. Barely a decade later, he was...

“We were losing about $160 million a year. We burned through our cash and we had to make some changes. I don’t mean a financial restructuring. I mean transformation of the business. It’s a skill and an art. I asked, ‘What does Kodak do today?’ and I couldn’t get an answer. And I thought we had to get our identity back. What are our skills? What do we do?”

Leanna Byrne speaks to Jim Continenza, chief executive of Kodak, the company that once dominated photography and became one of the world’s most recognisable brands.

The rise of...

“As there is more drone warfare, more artificial intelligence in the decision making, we’re going to have to completely reimagine how we cover [war]”

Business presenter Felicity Hannah speaks to Patrick Tiernan, who runs the 337-year-old insurance marketplace, Lloyds of London.

He says that autonomous weapons and AI-driven decision-making could change how conflict risk is calculated and insured, because traditional assumptions about how wars escalate may no longer hold. He says the current risk environment is unlike anything in his company’s long history, and that a major state-backed cyber-attack remains one of their realisti...

“It's a subject that I know I've lived, I've seen up close…That includes watching my father. That includes the relationships that I saw him have.” Presenter Anne Soy speaks to Gugu Zuma-Ncube and Thuli Zuma, executive producers of The Polygamist, one of Netflix’s biggest new dramas which takes on the topic of polygamy - the practice of having more than one spouse at the same time. They are also the daughters of former South African president Jacob Zuma - a proud polygamist who is greatly respected by his supporters for upholding his cultural and traditional Zulu beliefs. The Zulu...

“I'm a proud American. I became a citizen in 2021. I feel at home here both in America and actually, in a way I actually have never felt before. I feel like this is where I'm meant to be, and I couldn't be more honoured that people now are putting their faith in me to turn the state around.”

Nick Robinson speaks to Steve Hilton, the British-born Republican candidate for governor of California in November’s US midterm elections.

Once a senior adviser to former UK prime minister David Cameron, Hilton left British politics to build a new...

“The last thing to come into view was this blue glow, and we could see craters and the surface of the Moon. But the Sun is on the other side, so what was lighting the Moon? It was ‘Earthshine’, the light of the Earth reflecting off the near side of the Moon. I don’t think our brains are evolved to understand what we were seeing. I called Houston and said, ‘I think we’ve just gone into sci-fi.’”

Paddy O’Connell speaks to Artemis II astronaut Victor Glover, who was part of the first crewed mission to the Moon in mor...

“Gen Z are spending less hours in person with each other per year than their same age group two decades ago… They experienced the pandemic during those years of the late teens, early 20s, those years when you're sort of experimenting with how you show up in person with another person, how you flirt, how you think about intimacy, you know, so. They absolutely want love, they're struggling to find ways to find it and struggling to have the confidence to put themselves out there.”

Sean Farrington speaks to Jackie Jantos, CEO of popular mobile dating app Hinge...

“It had grown to be quite an expensive event. Our members wanted to host the games, and because of the size and the scale of the event that was not possible.”

Mani Djazmi speaks to Katie Sadleir, CEO of the Commonwealth Games about how hosting the event had become unaffordable for many Commonwealth countries. This summer’s games were to be held in Victoria, Australia, but they withdrew due to expanding costs.

Speaking ahead of the Games which now take place in Glasgow, Scotland from the end of July, she talks about the new strategy she la...

“There are many parts of the world where people have retreated slightly. I think it's a very, very short-sighted myopic view of the world for people to deny the science and procrastinate and not do the things that we've been warned we need to do.”

Waihiga Mwaura speaks to former US Secretary of State John Kerry about why he thinks governments are retreating from efforts to deal with climate change.

He spoke to the BBC during this year’s Our Ocean Conference, an international forum which Kerry launched in 2014 to help protect the world’s oceans.<...

“I don't want to give any lessons to British people, and it's difficult for us to receive lessons from outside, because nobody is able to give lessons to others... But we also have to take into account what happens around us in Europe, Russia and Ukraine, and outside the world in the Middle East. The world is more and more dangerous, unstable and fragile - and in facing this world, we need to be together.”

Katya Adler speaks to Michel Barnier who served as the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, on the 10th anniversary of the highly conseq...

“I escaped into my imagination. That is what I did from the earliest time that I can remember. I was writing stories, and when the world was too difficult, I would just make up one of my own and I would spend my time there. That was a power that I developed out of survival instinct, but it's also made it possible for me to spend so much time alone writing books.” Jamie Coomarasamy speaks to Patricia Cornwell, one of the world’s best-selling crime writers, whose books have sold more than 120 million copies worldwide. She reflects on a childh...

“The most vulnerable are almost always children, because they don't have any ability to change their circumstance. They don't start these wars. They are powerless to stop them, but they suffer so much in these situations.”

Nada Tawfik speaks to Catherine Russell, executive director of UNICEF, the United Nations agency responsible for protecting and supporting children.

Before taking up the role in 2022, she spent decades in government and diplomacy, including as assistant to President Joe Biden as well as serving in senior roles at the US State Department focused on global women’s issues and intern...

“Right now, it’s like the AI industry has a gas pedal, but it doesn’t have a brake pedal in the car. And what we’re saying is we want to build that brake pedal so we in the world have an option. In the future, you might say: ‘Let’s get all of the benefits we can for, say, biology and medical research, and let’s take a pause on AI research, where we can absorb the societal changes.’” Faisal Islam speaks to Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, one of the companies at the forefront of the artificial intelli...

“The state of Lebanon needs to have an exclusivity of arms. And definitely, Hezbollah needs to be disarmed… Disarming a group or a community is not possible by force, it's possible by conviction. You put pressure, but you cannot eliminate a whole society, a whole community. We need to have an exclusivity of arms in the hand of the state, an exclusivity of decision through a political process, pressuring Hezbollah to disarm, but getting also in parallel a full withdrawal of the Israelis from occupied Lebanese territories and a full cessation of hostilities.”

Jeremy Bowen speaks to Gebran...

“There is more spending in defence and less spending in global health or in public health or health security, which makes us vulnerable...Because the invisible enemy could be more impactful. Imagine, have you ever seen a war in recent memory that killed 20 million people? Why can't we come to our senses?”

Justin Webb speaks to Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organisation, about the invisible threat of viruses and the rapid spread of a new strain of Ebola.

Tedros recently visited the Democratic Republic of Congo where this latest outbreak started. It i...

“I do live here and now, but I often think about the past. But then again, I think a lot of people do. So I think writers, what are they going to draw on?”

Mark Savage speaks to musician Paul McCartney.

Born in Liverpool, England, during the Second World War, he found fame as a member of the legendary British band The Beatles in the 1960s, widely regarded as one of the most influential acts in music history.

McCartney shared primary singing and songwriting duties with bandmate John Lennon, and along with George Harr...

“I do want to make money, but I want to make money in the right way, ethically. But more importantly, I want use this money to be able to give back.”

Charles Gitonga speaks to entrepreneur and businessman Mohammed Dewji about becoming one of Africa’s youngest billionaires and how he wants to use his wealth.

Mohammed Dewji is a Tanzanian businessman, entrepreneur and philanthropist who has primarily accumulated his wealth from his family business, an East African conglomerate founded by his grandparents and expanded by his father in the 1970s. It deals with textile manufa...

‘We are transforming feelings of revenge into reconciliation. We are transforming despair into hope, trauma into healing. So the future is peace is also like a manual, like a guide, not just for a shared journey across the holy land, but a guide for human conscience.’

Rajan Datar speaks to Palestinian and Israeli authors and peace activists Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon.

Maoz Inon‘s parents were killed during the Hamas attacks of October 7th. Aziz Abu Sarah’s brother died after being detained for nearly a year in an Israeli military prison. Together, they hav...

“It's what we call a new world disorder: 60 wars, 120 million people - refugees and displaced, 300 million people hungry, plus another 45 million according to the World Food Program as a result of the constrictions in the Strait of Hormuz. That's a disordered world. And people can inveigh against international institutions as much as they like, but the problem we're facing is not that there's too strong an international system - it's too weak.”

Caitríona Perry speaks to David Miliband, President of the International Rescue Committee.

Miliband, who was previously British Foreign Secretary, first took up the p...

“The change that we're going to see happen with AI does mean that there's going to be some really difficult challenges and times ahead. But the question is, how do we get to both navigating those challenges as humanly and as gracefully as possible, and how do we get to the same kind of benefits of the amplification we got with the Industrial Revolution?“

Amol Rajan speaks to tech billionaire Reid Hoffman, about why he thinks artificial intelligence could transform the future of work.

Reid Hoffman is best known for co-founding LinkedIn, the largest professional netw...

“Historically, as a region, we’ve been extracted at two levels. If you look at the AI value chain, a lot of our youth, some who have studied computer science, are left at data labelling roles at the bottom of the value chain, where the least value is created. In a different way, a lot of our data is being extracted for free to train those systems. We want to make sure we don’t go into similar models that we had during colonisation.” Leanna Byrne speaks to Kate Kallot, founder of the Kenyan artificial intelligence company Amini, which is build...

“I was born in Coleraine, then I moved to Wales and then I moved to Ireland. It's very complicated and I feel there's a strange sense if you grow up somewhere different from where you were born. That's just true of everyone. If your accent doesn't match your name - as in my case - I think you walk alongside all your life a kind of ghost-self in that there's always a sense of ‘who would I have been if we'd stayed?’”

Katie Razzall speaks to acclaimed writer Maggie O’Farrell. The 54-year-old has been a published author for...

“I feel numb. It feels unreal to me, having been in Sudan all my life. I have never imagined that it will turn into a war field, it looks like a nightmare. At first that it is just days or months or even a year, but it went on and it kept escalating. Even our homes are no longer habitable. One of my sons went back to have a look and he said you wouldn't even find a spoon for your tea.” James Copnall speaks to Aisha Musa, one of the civilian figures who helped lead Sudan after the over...

“This is a calling. It's bigger than anything in your life as an individual. If you found the thing that you were put on this planet to do, and a lot of people are put on this planet and they don't know, it's such a gift to find it.”

Nick Grimshaw and Annie Macmanus speak to global music icon Chaka Khan about her life and career.

Born Yvette Marie Stevens in the US city of Chicago in 1953, her big break came at the age of 20 when her band Rufus signed its first record deal. With her...

“Most of Africa is rural, and although urbanisation is taking root now, the systems that deliver financial services to women are still eluding them.” Leanna Byrne speaks to microfinance pioneer Dr Jennifer Riria about her life, career, and personal mission to improve the lives of women in some of Africa’s poorest communities. Having started life in a poor, rural village in Kenya, Dr Riria worked her way up to develop and run one of the biggest microfinance institutions for women in Africa. Microfinance is a banking service providing small loans and more, to people with low income who might...

“This is a war. We will treat it as a war, and first thing that we want is the war to end. We want peace. We want a better life for our people, especially for our youth.”

Caitriona Perry speaks to Ecuador President Daniel Noboa about his hard-line military crackdown on violent criminal gangs, which has involved measures that human rights groups warn could pose a risk to civil liberties.

President Noboa, who is one of the world’s youngest leaders, has warned about the levels of crime faced in Ecuador. He claims that due to its...

“The person who has always been my uncle, and whenever he comes to the house, I'm running to him. He buys me sweets, this is like my uncle. And then one day they said, oh, this your husband. I'm like, what? At that point I hated myself, I hated my mum because I wanted an adult to fight for me but she just did not have it to fight because she was so scared of my dad.” BBC journalist Megha Mohan speaks to Sierra Leone’s first lady, Fatima Bio, about escaping child marriage at the age of 13, rebuilding her li...

“Our best reply to the regime is that they didn't make us bad people. That we remain focused on our dream of seeing a free Venezuela. I have seen other people become very bitter and angry and resentful. And I think they lose. Because when you become angry you become, in a way, a prisoner of a sentiment that doesn't allow you to go forward.” James Menendez speaks to Leopoldo Lopez, once the most prominent face of Venezuela’s opposition, he is now living in exile in Spain. He spent more than a decade attempting to unseat Nicolás Maduro’...

“Russians collected all Kenyans and did everything for them to go to the front line, to go to the death zone.”

Waihiga Mwaura speaks to Yurii Tokar the Ukraine ambassador to Kenya. The Ukrainian claims Russia deliberately deployed many conscripted Kenyans to the front line of the Russia-Ukraine war shortly before the Kenyan foreign minister arrived in Moscow with the intention of stopping recruitment of his countrymen.

The Russian embassy in Kenya did not immediately respond to the BBC's request for comment. It has previously denied any Government involvement in the illegal recruitment of Kenyan citi...

“It’s outrageous because these nuclear plant facilities were certified by the International Atomic Energy Agency as purely peaceful facilities. The inspectors, they spent, there, a lot of time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Iran is the most verifiable country, thousands of inspections. The agency knows everything about what is going on.” BBC journalist Farnaz Ghazizadeh speaks to Mikhail Ivanovich Ulyanov, Russia’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, about the collapse of diplomacy over Iran’s nuclear programme and whether negotiations can still be rescued. With decades of experience in disarmament and nuclear negotiations, Ulyanov in...

“During the recent conflict [in Iran], there was a pause, not a full stop or halt of the functions. Once the airspace opened up again, we reprioritized the delivery of those life-saving kits to the member states, and we came back on track… We still find hope in the communication between the different member states, between the different partners to secure some of these supplies, or keep supply chains alive.” Daniel Dadzie speaks to Hanan Balkhy, the World Health Organisation’s Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean, about navigating the challenges posed by recent conflicts in Sudan and Iran. It’s one...

“There's this idea that you [can] sail your way to success or have some overnight success or kind of come upon success relatively easily. And that has just never, ever been.”

Amol Rajan speaks to entrepreneur and businesswoman Emma Grede about the trade-offs we have to make to get to where we want to be in life.

Emma Grede is co-founder of the clothing brand Skims, which she created with her husband Jens and Kim Kardashian. From ordinary beginnings in East London to the forefront of global consumer brands and social influence in LA, Emma Gred...

‘The power of AI is that it's able to capture everything, it’s able to try to interpret everyone objectively. Human beings are imperfect in terms of their capability to listen and understand. Everyone unconsciously, when they listen, they don't hear everything.’ Zoe Kleinman speaks to Sam Liang chief executive and co-founder of artificial intelligence transcription start-up Otter.ai Sam Liang was born in China and moved to the US in 1991. He received a PhD from Stanford University before joining Google, where he led the search engines location services. He co-founded California based Otter.ai in 2016. The start-up has evolve...

“When we only had reconnaissance drones, we learned fast. We began attaching warheads to the drones. Grenades, then homemade munitions that we produced ourselves. We would locate the enemy with the drone and drop them on him. Then FPV drones entered our lives. An FPV drone is a one-way, disposable drone. That was when the way of war began to change” In a rare interview, Sarah Rainsford speaks to Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s drone forces, about the rapid evolution of drone warfare and how it is reshaping Russia’s war in Ukraine. Drones are now being used to strik...