PODCAST · government
The Interview
by BBC World Service
Conversations with people shaping our world, from all around the globe. Listen to The Interview for the best conversations from the BBC, the world's most trusted international news provider. We hear from titans of business, politics, finance, sport and culture. Global leaders, decision-makers and cultural icons. Politicians, activists and CEOs. Each interview is around 20-minutes, packed full of insight and analysis, covering some of the biggest issues of our time. How does it work? Well, at the BBC, our journalists interview amazing people every single day. And on The Interview, we bring them to you. It’s your one-stop-shop to the best conversations coming out of the BBC, with the people shaping our world, from all over the world. Get in touch with us on [email protected] and use the hashtag #TheInterviewBBC on social media.
Episodes
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Archbishop Paul Gallagher: Diplomacy means talking to all sides
“Diplomacy is about talking to lots of people with whom you don't agree. And that's what diplomats do. And I think we would do that... The Vatican has always had very little difficulty, perhaps too little difficulty, in dealing with all sorts of political actors, all sorts regimes, all sorts of...
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Arundhati Roy, author and activist: Writing is universal
“When I was writing it I didn’t think it would touch such a universal chord, you know, because it seemed to me so weird, my childhood and my mother and my life, it was, but of course, everybody has something. And a lot of people I meet have said this to me and that it helped them see their…
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Peter Obi, Nigerian presidential candidate: The last election was rigged
“Nigeria can fight insecurity, head on. It only requires it for the commander-in-chief to be determined that this will end. Those criminals live with us. In our communities, people know them. I will go to the communities and find them. I will take control. And I will not do it from Abuja.” Madina...
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Alexander Tah-ray Yui, Taiwan’s representative to US: We’re prepared for China to invade
“We don't have to have a fight, and we don't have to land in China, go to Beijing and win the war. All we have to do is prevent them to getting their objective of landing in Taiwan and conquering. It's not going to be easy, but we've been preparing for this for 77 years.” Sumi Somaskanda speaks…
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Meredith Whittaker, Signal president: Privacy is a human right
“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…
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Jerry Brown, former California governor: America then and now
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…
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Shami Chakrabarti, human rights lawyer: Healthy democracies need a free media
“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...
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Olara Otunnu, diplomat: UN cannot be diplomatic ivory tower
“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...
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Kai Bird, Author: Roy Cohn, the man who shaped Trump?
“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…
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Abhijeet Dipke, youth campaigner: There’s an underlying frustration in India
“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...
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Estelle Brachlianoff, Veolia CEO: We need to rethink waste
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…
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Roelf Meyer, South African Ambassador: Trump has been misled
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…
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Earl Spencer, Diana’s brother: King Charles told me the world would forget her
“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…
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Fally Ipupa, musician: Speak out on DRC suffering
“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...
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Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the ICRC: The rules of war are being ignored
‘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…
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David Vigneault, ex-intelligence chief: Democracies are being destabilised
“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…
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Amir Khan Muttaqi, Afghan FM: Not everything is banned for women
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....
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Sophia Amoruso, Nasty Gal founder: I was out of my league
“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…
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Vadym Skibitsky, Ukrainian intelligence: We are fighting for survival
“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…
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Rene Haas, Arm CEO: AI demand won’t slow
“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...
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Leah Solivan, TaskRabbit founder: How the gig economy falls short
“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...
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Daron Acemoglu, Economist: Liberal democracy is in crisis
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...
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Michelle Bachelet, UN Chief candidate: Time for a woman to lead
“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…
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Kristina Wilfore: Male anxieties being weaponised
“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…
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Joe Ngai, McKinsey: Domestic rivalry drives Chinese firms
“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…
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María Fernanda Espinosa, UN secretary general candidate: The UN risks becoming irrelevant
“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...
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Mopreme Shakur on Tupac: The sensitive man behind the music
“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…
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Hunter Biden: Father’s pardon not good for country
“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...
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Celeste Saulo, WMO: Extreme weather is the new normal
“[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...
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Dmitry Muratov, journalist: Putin can’t claim victory in Ukraine
"There are repressions, political repressions, against freedom of speech, against elections, against the rights of citizens to hold mass events. To such an extent that we don't know what the real public mood is.” The BBC’s Russia editor Steve Rosenberg meets Dmitry Muratov one of Russia’s most...
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Yemi Alade, singer: I wanted to be a mega superstar
“I just knew that I wanted to be a mega superstar and I didn't know how…I feel like Africa chose me before I even chose Africa, and I feel music chose me before I chose music.” Nkechi Ogbonna speaks to Nigerian singer and songwriter Yemi Alade about becoming one of Africa's biggest music stars…
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Sonam Wangchuk, Indian activist: Hunger strike for education reform
“This movement was by young people who had hardly anything to lose. We had no fear and that's what spread across the country and today people are raising their voices. This time it stopped at the education ministry, but if this continues, I think the younger generation may not stop at just...
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Carlos Acosta, dancer: Ballet is for everyone
“It's very important that we expose this work early on, so that people from different cultures see ballet as a way of a career. But in the 1990s or 2000s, it was pretty much closed, we didn't have - even in school - a lot of black ballet dancers from which to choose from. But now, obviously…
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Srinivasan Muralidhar: The trauma of Palestinian children
‘When it comes to humanitarian crisis, we should not allow children's future to be subject to geopolitics. We can't say that there are politically compulsions as a result of which we are allowing children to die of starvation. We can't say there are political compulsions because of which we are...
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Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, Ghana’s Foreign Minister: Slavery scars our collective conscience
“The time has come for the international community to be honest, not to be hypocritical, not be selective, not engage in erasure, but to admit that the gravest crime against humanity took place and it took place on this continent. And that the time to repair what was broken, what undermines our...
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Sumant Sinha: Green tech to triumph over drilling
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...
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Gayton McKenzie, South African minister: Immigration unrest
“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...
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Rohan Kanawade, film director: My parents accepted my sexuality
‘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.’...
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Rafael Grossi, IAEA: Nuclear back on the table?
“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…...
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Amy Wallace, writer: We all need to speak up
“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...
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Maggie Haberman, US journalist: Trump tests limits
“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…
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Christopher Nolan, director: We need to take risks
“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…
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Jim Continenza, Kodak CEO: Reinventing a brand
“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...
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Patrick Tiernan: War risk is being rewritten
“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...
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Jacob Zuma’s daughters: Polygamy is a subject we lived
“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...
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Steve Hilton: Brit running for California governor
“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...
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Victor Glover, astronaut: We went into sci-fi
“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…
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Jackie Jantos, Hinge CEO: Gen Z struggle to connect
Sean Farrington speaks to Jackie Jantos, CEO of popular mobile dating app Hinge, about finding romance in today’s rapidly-changing digital world. Launched back in 2013, US-based Hinge has steadily grown to become one of the world’s biggest mobile dating apps. As of 2025, there were 30 million…
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Katie Sadleir, Commonwealth Games: They are still relevant
“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…
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John Kerry: Countries failing to deal with climate change
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...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Conversations with people shaping our world, from all around the globe. Listen to The Interview for the best conversations from the BBC, the world's most trusted international news provider. We hear from titans of business, politics, finance, sport and culture. Global leaders, decision-makers and cultural icons. Politicians, activists and CEOs. Each interview is around 20-minutes, packed full of insight and analysis, covering some of the biggest issues of our time. How does it work? Well, at the BBC, our journalists interview amazing people every single day. And on The Interview, we bring them to you. It’s your one-stop-shop to the best conversations coming out of the BBC, with the people shaping our world, from all over the world. Get in touch with us on [email protected] and use the hashtag #TheInterviewBBC on social media.
HOSTED BY
BBC World Service
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How many episodes does The Interview have?
The Interview currently has 1000 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Interview about?
Conversations with people shaping our world, from all around the globe. Listen to The Interview for the best conversations from the BBC, the world's most trusted international news provider. We hear from titans of business, politics, finance, sport and culture. Global leaders, decision-makers and...
How often does The Interview release new episodes?
The Interview releases new episodes frequently with a large back catalog of 1000 episodes. Check the episode list for recent publication dates.
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You can listen to The Interview on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Interview?
The Interview is created and hosted by BBC World Service.
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