I appreciate Stephen Sackur relentlessness to get to the core of issues. He often has a balance of not being too pushy but yet ensuring guests are confronted with the accountability of their stances.

Propublica just broke this story of their investigation: Trump is using his media company to allow rich donors to buy a piece of Trump and reap the benefits in the form of government contracts and tax breaks if he gets elected again. The investigative reporting connects the new “Trump TV” to a streaming technology company in Melania’s home country (Slovenia) and to a rich Republican donor who had made millions off his relationship with Trump already.

Thank God, the Americans screwed their heads on and got Trump in. Very sorry for the UK removing your own freedoms, vote by vote….. much and thanks to propaganda shows like this one. It’s really sad.

Great interview on the Israel conflict n Gaza. This is one of my favorite podcasts. It always interesting subjects and relevant topics. Thank you for your program and specially for your Interview with Ariel Dorfman. He is a fascinating writer, a human rights advocate and his life is just amazing. Mr. Dorfman was very inspiring in despite of his life experiences and his dystopian stories of his books. Since I come from Latin America and my father had similar experiences from those years. I am interested to read more of his books since many of his recurrent themes are still very relevant today.

I really enjoy how hard talk gets down to the important questions. It feels like most news now is so biased and doesn’t ask hard questions. It brings me a lot of joy to hear some one finally asking hard questions

Stephen Sackur conducts thorough, fair, probing, and revealing interviews with a very diverse set of guests. The level of research into each show is unparalleled. A true jewel in the BBC crown.

Steven Sackur does an amazing job with his guests on Hard Talk. I can only imagine the amount of research which goes into his shows. Thank you for this great program!

As a long time fan of the BBC and many of its media productions over the years, I found myself surprised and extremely disappointed in listening to Sarah Montague’s interview with Penpa Tsering of the Central Tibetan Administration. Far from being the balanced and perceptive inquiry that I have come to know BBC reporting for over the years, Montague’s interviewing was pushy and aggressive to the point of being plainly disrespectful. Simply not professional reportage. Most disturbingly, several of her questions questioned the validity of the ongoing cultural genocide in Tibet, which has been documented and reported on exhaustively for decades now. In doing so, Montague implicitly endorsed the oppressive, anti-Tibetan propaganda of the People’s Republic of China. For shame.

For the past year the quality and content of this podcast has significantly declined. It’s like every interview in the past year is about Ukraine. Although it is important there are other important issues going on around the world. More diversity of topics and less Ukraine will be nice!

I understand you can’t deal with everyone with the same severity but I was expecting hard talk to be hard all round. Steven is, in some cases, pushy and overbearing using a no holds barred method of interrogating those he interviews. Fair enough, it’s hard talk, right!? Not for the left wingers. He’s very tame and borderline respectful when inquisitive or at best mildly pushy but still avoiding known important points. Frost was a far more professional interviewer.