Hardtalk

Hardtalk speaks to the original tree hugger. The phrase was coined back in the 1970s when she - along with a group of women in India - hugged trees to stop them from being chopped down. In the decades since, Vandana Shiva has become known throughout the world for her environmental campaigns. She says a billion people go hungry in the world because of the way greedy international companies go about their business. So is it a naïve world view or could we really end poverty and improve everyone's life by returning to old fashioned ways of farming?(Image: Vandana Shiva hugging a tree, Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

James Cracknell is a former Olympic rowing champion who has performed astonishing feats of endurance from the Sahara to Antarctica. But his toughest challenge has come by accident, not design. Two years ago his skull was smashed by a truck as he cycled across America. Miraculously he survived and his body healed, but his brain suffered significant damage. How has he responded to a test which changed his personality and his life?

Poland’s economy is growing, as is its diplomatic clout. The Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski has backed Germany's vision of much deeper EU integration. But do Poles really want to cede their hard won sovereignty to Brussels and Berlin?

Ukraine's just held parliamentary elections. A cause for celebration, and the flowering of democracy in a former Soviet republic? Not if you read the reports of international election monitors or hear the comments of the world's top diplomats. So eight years after the Orange Revolution, with some of the government's leading critics serving long sentences in jail, has Ukraine made its choice? Is it in effect turning its back on the offer of membership of the EU, the club of Europe?

Hardtalk is in Cairo to assess the state of Egypt's post-revolutionary politics. Right now, the report card is decidedly mixed. Egypt has a democratically-elected president but arguments over the framing of a new constitution have sparked clashes between rival Islamist and secular activists in Tahrir Square. Stephen Sackur speaks to Egypt's Prime Minister Hisham Qandil and asks is the new Egyptian government living up to the promise of the Tahrir revolution?(Image: Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil. Credit: GIANLUIGI GUERCIA/AFP/GettyImages)

The European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize for fostering unity in Europe, but the award was made during the current EU presidency of its only divided member - Cyprus. Since 1974 the island has been partitioned between its Turkish-occupied north and the Republic of Cyprus which joined the EU eight years ago.Cyprus is also presiding over the biggest crisis in the EU's history - a potential financial meltdown triggered by indebted nations like Greece and Cyprus itself. Zeinab Badawi talks to Andreas Mavroyiannis the deputy minister for European Affairs for Cyprus. Does he believe the peace prize is a shot in the arm for the EU that will help boost its confidence and bring vital momentum in finding a blueprint for recovery?

Next Tuesday’s US Presidential Election promises to be the closest since the Bush/Gore race ended in a dispute over hanging chads a dozen years ago. And Barack Obama could yet join the list of underwhelming one-term presidents. HARDtalk’s Stephen Sackur speaks to a veteran Democratic party consultant and campaign strategist, Bob Shrum, and asks why President Obama is struggling to rekindle the enthusiasm he generated four years ago.(Image: Bob Shrum, Credit: Getty Images)

Mitt Romney and his Republican advisers claim momentum is on their side as the US presidential election enters the final stretch. Their unrelenting focus is on the ailing US economy and their claim that a Romney administration would rebuild America as a low tax, small government engine of economic enterprise. HARDtalk’s Stephen Sackur speaks to Grover Norquist, founder of the advocacy group Americans for Tax Reform - one of the most influential figures in Republican politics. Just how credible is the Romney rescue plan for America?

From global media baron to convicted criminal doing time in a Florida jail, the remarkable rise and fall of Conrad Black has made for years of lurid headlines - not least in the newspapers he used to own. Now Conrad Black, or Lord Black of Crossharbour, is a free man out to rebuild his reputation on both sides of the Atlantic. After a turbulent decade, is he a changed man?(Image: Conrad Black. Credit: Brian Kersey/Getty Images)

Stop smoking, eat less, exercise more, pay your taxes on time. So many things governments want us to do; so hard to get us to do them.Shaun Ley speaks to behavioural economist Richard Thaler who thinks he has the answer. It's called 'nudge' theory, but it's not just an academic idea. Britain's Prime Minister is so impressed, he's set up a whole 'nudge unit' in the heart of his government. If you live in Britain, you may unwittingly already be part of a nudge experiment. So is the nudge guru teaching those in power how to encourage us to live better; or helping politicians to control us?

What has happened to Europe’s ambition to lead the world toward a low-carbon, sustainable future? As austerity bites, so doubts intensify about the wisdom of de-carbonising the European economy and financing greener growth in the developing world. Stephen Sackur speaks to the EU Commissioner for Climate Action, Connie Hedegaard. Are Europe’s politicians failing the climate change challenge?(Image: Connie Hedegaard, Credit: AFP/Getty)

The grandeur of the French foreign ministry in Paris gives a sense of how France sees its role in Europe - it's assumed here, Paris will have a dominant role in shaping the continent's future. But how does that square with current reality? The French economy is in a mess, the public is apparently disillusioned with the EU and the new Socialist government has yet to define a clear vision for Europe's future. Stephen Sackur speaks to France's Europe minister Bernard Cazeneuve.Is France capable of leading Europe out of its current crisis?(Image: Bernard Cazeneuve, Minister delegate for European Affairs, France. Credit: JOHN THYS/AFP/GettyImages)

The aviation industry is in trouble. Fuel prices have soared, there’s been a drop in passenger numbers and some airlines have gone out of business, but in Europe there’s one airline which is bucking the trend. The low-cost, no-frills Ryanair carried almost 80 million passengers last year. Michael O’Leary is the pugnacious, outspoken Chief Executive of Ryanair who has ambitions to make his airline even bigger, but how far can he fly before he gets shot down? He talks to Stephen Sackur in Dublin. (Image: Michael O'Leary, Chief Executive of Ryanair Credit: Getty Images)

With elections approaching in six months, many Kenyans are apprehensive. The last disputed presidential election resulted in violence which claimed 1500 lives. Two of today’s presidential candidates face charges at the International Criminal Court in The Hague as a result of their alleged involvement in 2008’s bloodshed. HARDtalk’s Stephen Sackur talks to one of those men, former education minister, William Ruto. Are Kenya’s politicians failing their people?

In-depth, hard-hitting interviews with newsworthy personalities.

Can the euro be saved? Europe's leaders think so; its central bank says there's no limit to the money it's prepared to spend to defend it. But is their solution in danger of destroying not just a currency but Europe's union, too? Otmar Issing fears so. As one of the most senior officials when the European Central Bank was founded, he helped bring the euro into being. Until this year he advised Germany's Angela Merkel and he remains one of Europe's most influential economic voices. When the euro was being planned, Otmar Issing believed that political union was essential. Now he fears that centralising power in Brussels and Frankfurt and sharing financial risk could provoke a public backlash that would wreck both the currency and the continent.

In the lead-up to November's Presidential election in the United States, groups on the right and left are sounding the alarm at the influence of money on US politics.Katya Adler speaks to one guest who knows a lot about that. At the height of his career he made millions as a career lobbyist in Washington, wining, dining and influencing lawmakers. His fall from grace was dramatic and saw him publicly disgraced and imprisoned for fraud and bribery. A free man once again, Jack Abramoff says he is a reformed man, lobbying to correct what he describes as a corrupt system where he says his behaviour was and continues to be commonplace. Is he trying to make amends for his past or put the blame on others?

Europe's economic crisis has pushed its governments further and faster down the road of economic integration than many might have expected. But it is also raising serious questions about countries' individual powers and identity. At a time when the people of Europe say they've never trusted the EU less what is the European Union's ultimate goal - to be a federal super-state or a looser union based on common economic goals? Katya Adler has gone to the heart of EU business, Brussels, to the European Parliament to talk to British Conservative MEP Richard Ashworth and to Guy Verhofstadt, former Belgian Prime Minister, now the leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. Where is the EU project going and are the people of Europe behind it?(Image: European Union flag Credit: Getty Images)

Kurds in Iraq are growing restless and impatient over the violence and open political rivalries in Baghdad, between Shias and Sunnis. Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region of four million is a haven of relative stability and prosperity and what's more has its own oil riches to exploit. Zeinab Badawi speaks to Ashti Hawrami. For the last six years, he's been Minister for Natural Resources in Kurdistan's regional government. Why are Kurds upsetting the central government by increasingly seizing control of their oil resources and exports? Do they have plans to breakaway?(Image: Ashti Hawrami. Credit: AFP / Getty Images)

Have opposition politicians in Zimbabwe learned the lessons of the violent and disputed elections in 2008 in which Robert Mugabe and his party Zanu-PF outmanoeuvred the Movement for Democratic Change, and held onto power. The MDC has since been in an uneasy power-sharing government, in which its main leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, is prime minister. But a breakaway MDC faction led by the Commerce and Industry Minister, Welshman Ncube, is splintering the opposition ahead of fresh elections due by next June. Zeinab Badawi speaks to Welshman Ncube and asks whether the opposition should be united to better oppose Zanu-PF.