Adriana Brownlee is a mountaineering pioneer. The British woman became the youngest female to summit K2 - the second-highest mountain on Earth - in 2022. But mountains are changing and becoming more unpredictable because of climate change. High mountain areas are warming faster than the rest of the planet, meaning glaciers are shrinking and permafrost holding mountain faces together are disappearing. How are mountaineers like Adriana adapting and what implications are there for communities livin...
Jan 02, 2024•28 min
Internationally renowned Saudi artist Manal AlDowayan is midway through an ambitious public installation that will be shown in the Valley of Arts, in the desert of north-west Saudi Arabia. She has just returned from collecting stories and drawings from the inhabitants of AlUla, and is starting to transform them into her own artwork. Titled Oasis of Stories, the project pays tribute to the local people of AlUla. She will carve their drawings into her installation, just like their ancestors carved...
Jan 01, 2024•27 min
A special programme remembering past HARDtalk guests who died in 2023. All of them left an indelible mark on public life and all, in their different ways, relished the opportunity we gave them to discuss their decision-making and motivation. (Photo: Sandra Day O'Connor is sworn in before the Senate Judiciary committee during confirmation hearings as she seeks to become the first woman to take a seat on the US Supreme Court, Washington, DC, 9 September , 1981. Credit: David Hume Kennerly/Getty Im...
Dec 31, 2023•24 min
We have spent the last year here on BBC OS Conversations covering some of the World’s major news stories. As the year draws to a close, however, we thought it would be interesting to hear from three people who have been doing something completely different in 2023 for their perspective on the world. 53-year-old professional explorer from Australia, Geoff Wilson, joined us from Canada. He has just completed the first part of his latest expedition, Project Zero, a two-year journey to promote the c...
Dec 30, 2023•24 min
Some people said it was created by Peruvian scientists, that it gorged on the blood of farm animals, that it was a monster. Many myths have grown up in Bolivia around the Paiche, one of the world’s largest scaled freshwater fish which is native to Amazonian rivers of Brazil and Peru and can grow up to four metres long. But after young fish were accidentally released from a Peruvian fish farm, the Paiche has arrived big time in Bolivian rivers. Every year, it reaches another 40 km of river and is...
Dec 28, 2023•28 min
Stephen Sackur looks back at some of HARDtalk’s most impactful and thought-provoking interviews of 2023.
Dec 27, 2023•24 min
Photographer Andrea Hernández has been travelling around her native Venezuela documenting people and nature for her ongoing project called Mango Season. Mango season in Venezuela is a time of abundance, when mango fruit is plentiful on the trees. During this time of economic crisis and food scarcity in the country, many people can now be seen roaming the streets looking for these fruits to feed themselves and their families. Andrea doesn’t want to just take photographs of the hungry, but to dign...
Dec 25, 2023•27 min
Mani Djazmi presents a special programme as Crystal Palace defender Joel Ward and the former Portsmouth player Linvoy Primus discuss their Christian faith. We also hear from former USA international Jaelene Daniels, whose religious beliefs led her to turn down the chance to continue playing for her country.
Dec 24, 2023•27 min
There’s no doubt this has been Taylor Swift’s year. Just 34 years old, the American singer songwriter has been in the music industry for more than half her life. She’s a multi-award winning performer whose diehard fans have helped her break all sorts of records. Time Magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year is also the most streamed female artist on Spotify and Apple and this week she achieved a record 90 weeks at number 1 on the US Billboard Artist 100 chart. Swift’s Eras tour, which began in March t...
Dec 23, 2023•26 min
Many mythological creatures and traditions we know, love, and more importantly fear, owe their origins to Celtic folklore. Borrowed to create epic franchises such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, the countless adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Walt Disney’s Peter Pan, this programme casts new light on the subject. Seanchaí (shan-a-key) were/are traditional Irish storytellers and the custodians of history for centuries in Ireland. They can recite ancient lore and tales ...
Dec 22, 2023•26 min
Rebuilding Ukraine after the destruction inflicted by Russia will be a gigantic task. Foreign donors have pledged billions of dollars. But they want reassurances that the money will be properly spent, in a country which still has high levels of corruption. For Assignment Tim Whewell visits Bucha, near the capital Kyiv, site of some of the worst Russian atrocities, to see the beginning of reconstruction. A series of shocking reports by Ukrainian journalists into alleged misuse of rebuilding funds...
Dec 21, 2023•27 min
In a remote corner of Northern Kenya, former Samburu warriors continue to rescue orphaned and abandoned baby elephants, even as drought has put on hold plans to release them back into the wild. Traditionally Samburu warriors are not only charged with protecting their community, but with caring for their livestock. Now they have turned their attention to raising elephants. At Reteti Elephant Sanctuary, they rescue baby elephants that have been injured, orphaned or abandoned. They look after them,...
Dec 19, 2023•27 min
Ivo van Hove is the most sought-after theatre director in the world. We join him in Paris, London and Amsterdam, where he works on productions that are often maximal - big musicals, operas and dramas such as The Damned - but where he also loves to stage minimal intimate dramas, such as The Glass Menagerie or A Little Life. How does van Hove work? Why are actors of the calibre of James Norton and Isabel Huppert so willing to work with him? And what drives his relentless thirst to bring new experi...
Dec 18, 2023•27 min
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky knows that if he has any hope of victory in the war in his country he needs his international friends to keep backing him. Although the size of that task was pretty clear this week, in both the United States and Europe, when he returned largely empty handed - for now, at least. Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, says he remains up for the fight and talked confidently about ultimate success. It is now approaching two years of war in Ukraine...
Dec 16, 2023•24 min
What does it mean to be a gay Christian in a country where many Church leaders say your sexuality is wicked and even demonic? In 2013, a group of LGBT Christians in Kenya started meeting for Sunday worship, to practice their faith free from homophobia. The community grew and became Kenya’s first openly queer-affirming Church - a sanctuary for diverse believers who feel excluded from mainstream religious spaces. But with calls for new laws to further curtail the rights of LGBT Kenyans, and increa...
Dec 15, 2023•27 min
As hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers defend their country against Russia, many patriotic civilians are engaged in a struggle that's less risky, but that they believe is also vital. They’re battling for a fairer, less corrupt Ukraine, worthy of its heroes. For Assignment, Tim Whewell follows one tireless citizens’ group in the city of Dnipro as they continue, even in wartime, to hold local authorities to account. They've been investigating a contract to repair housing damaged in a Russi...
Dec 14, 2023•27 min
In 2013 Iceland made history by becoming the first European country to sign a free trade agreement with China. It was aimed at increasing exports from Iceland to China as well as opening up Iceland to cheaper Chinese consumer goods. Geothermal energy has meant that Iceland is effectively carbon neutral. Its expertise in this area has led to collaboration with China and its geothermal model is changing China's energy mix. One man behind this collaboration is Atli Jonsson, CEO of Arctic Green Ener...
Dec 12, 2023•27 min
Kengo Kuma has a philosophy: to enrich the connection between buildings and nature, “almost tuning-in” to the materials. His architecture is inspired by traditional Japanese design, and he is a serious critic of the global dominance of concrete. Kuma’s mission has manifested in iconic buildings including China’s Folk Art Museum, the V&A in Scotland, and Japan’s National Stadium, built for the 2020 Olympics. Broadcaster Nick Luscombe follows Kuma to Japan’s oldest and largest lake, and to the...
Dec 11, 2023•27 min
Former BBC Taiwan correspondent Cindy Sui meets two young Taiwanese voters, Shirley Lin and Dennis, who have very different views about the island, its future and its relationship with Mainland China. While one is a committed peace campaigner and seeks to reduce antagonism between Taiwan and China, the other has signed up to train with a citizen's army, to be ready for Chinese aggression. We follow them in their work, with their friends and hear their differing reflections on an island and an el...
Dec 10, 2023•50 min
World leaders are currently meeting in Dubai for the United Nations’ COP23 climate summit to discuss how to cope with a changing global climate. At the same time, a new study has suggested that air pollution from using fossil fuels is responsible for 5 million avoidable deaths around the world every year. Host James Reynolds brings together three young people in India, Uganda and Bangladesh to hear their concerns and what it’s like to live in a country struggling with air pollution. “I got up, I...
Dec 09, 2023•24 min
Sarajevo’s most famous artefact, a 700 year-old Jewish prayer book called the Haggadah, captures the story the city wants to tell about itself. But is it accurate? In Sarajevo, Farrah Jarral joins members of the Jewish community to find out. In a city devastated by conflict in the 1990s, she hears stories about living together, and the wish that Jews and Muslims can still live alongside one another, as they had for hundreds of years. And the story of the Haggadah seems to capture that. Saved fro...
Dec 08, 2023•27 min
Cyprus is one of the main resting stops for songbirds as they migrate between Europe, Africa and the Middle East. For centuries, Cypriots trapped and ate a small number of migrating songbirds, as part of a subsistence diet. But over recent decades, the consumption of songbirds became a lucrative commercial business and the level of slaughter reached industrial levels. Millions of birds were killed each year as trappers employed new technologies to attract and capture birds. The methods used by t...
Dec 07, 2023•29 min
Three decades after the momentous transition from Apartheid to a democratic South Africa, Fergal Keane returns to see what happened to the hopes and promises of a better nation. In a famous speech thirty years ago, as he collected the Nobel Peace Prize, Nelson Mandela spoke of a “common humanity” in which all South Africans would live “like the children of paradise.” In this final episode, in which Fergal Keane and Milton Nkosi re-visit some of the places and people they encountered 30 years ago...
Dec 06, 2023•28 min
Three decades after the momentous transition from Apartheid to a democratic South Africa, Fergal Keane returns to see what happened to the hopes and promises of a better nation. In a famous speech thirty years ago, as he collected the Nobel Peace Prize, Nelson Mandela spoke of a “common humanity” in which all South Africans would live “like the children of paradise.” In this second episode, in which Fergal Keane and Milton Nkosi, re-visit some of the places and people they encountered 30 years a...
Dec 06, 2023•28 min
Three decades after the momentous transition from Apartheid to a democratic South Africa, Fergal Keane returns to see what happened to the hopes and promises of a better nation. In a famous speech thirty years ago, as he collected the Nobel Peace Prize, Nelson Mandela spoke of a “common humanity” in which all South Africans would live “like the children of paradise.” As the BBC’s South Africa correspondent at the time, Fergal Keane, along with his colleague and friend Milton Nkosi, lived through...
Dec 06, 2023•28 min
The Norwegian town of Kirkenes set on the coast and inside the Arctic Circle, is on the edge of what the Chinese refer to as the Polar Silk Road. The Northern Sea Route or Northeast Passage is an increasingly valuable shipping route for both Russia and China, hugging the Russian coastline to eastern Siberia. In 2010 a ship departed from Kirkenes bound for China with 41,500 tons of iron ore concentrate, arriving 22 days later. Via the Suez canal, the same journey would have taken over 40 days. It...
Dec 05, 2023•28 min
Iryna Tsilyk is one of Ukraine’s best known young documentary makers. She made her name following the lives of soldiers, female paramedics and families living on the frontline in East Ukraine after the region was taken over by Moscow-backed separatists. However after Russia’s full-scale invasion brought the war to Iryna’s home city of Kyiv, she decided she could no longer stay behind the camera. So, in her current project, The Red Zone, Iryna is turning the lens on herself and her family. Iryna’...
Dec 04, 2023•27 min
Sport but not as you know it. A brand new sports storytelling podcast. Imagine being stranded in the “death zone” on one of the world’s highest mountains. How about running 200 miles in a dark tunnel? We’ve been searching the world for the most amazing sport stories. Other podcasts bring you the scores and team news. This one tells the stories you’ll wish you’d known about and now probably won’t forget. You don’t need to be obsessed with sport to find yourself immersed in our mini-seasons and sh...
Dec 03, 2023•3 min
Henry Kissinger was one of the most important diplomatic figures of the last 50 years. James Naughtie looks back at his global influence, as he reflects on his own interview with Kissinger, conducted just a year before his death.
Dec 03, 2023•27 min
A week without war meant that the temporary pause in fighting was replaced by the emotions of family reunions. Before the air strikes resumed on Friday, dozens of the hostages captured by Hamas in the 7 October attacks were released, while Palestinians held in Israeli jails had been allowed to leave. In our conversations host James Reynolds hears a few of those stories of families celebrating seeing loved ones again. “My mum came out of the Earth one day and that was incredible,” Sharone Lifschi...
Dec 02, 2023•24 min
