Hardtalk

Baaba Maal is maintaining a West African tradition: he is an internationally renowned musician with a strong political voice, likle Fela Kuti and Yousso N’Dour before him. Baaba Maal's campaigning touches on sensitive territory from women's rights to HIV and climate change. Africa is currently a jarring mix of rapid economic growth and life-threatening poverty - as the continent changes, is the music changing too?

Why do some nations thrive while others fail? What does Norway have which Mali lacks? The renowned Harvard academic James Robinson is adamant one factor determines economic success much more than all others: the development of resilient, inclusive political institutions. The idea is political freedom begets prosperity. Stephen Sackur asks him if that is always true.

Stephen Sackur talks to the astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell about being a scientist in a man's world and tells him why she has learned to live with missing out on a Nobel Prize.

Zeinab Badawi challenges Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda, about UN allegations that his country has been supporting an armed group in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Hardtalk's Stephen Sackur talks the EU trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht. As Europe struggles to keep Greece in the Euro and world trade faces an uncertain future, how is the EU going to come out of the economic crisis?

As Africa's most populous nation and one of its biggest oil producers, Nigeria is a giant on the African stage. But in terms of prosperity it's never fulfilled the expectations of its people. Zeinab Badawi talks to musician and political activist Femi Kuti, son of the late legendary musician Fela Kuti. He's a constant thorn in the side of the authorities, and uses his songs to criticize government and speak up on behalf of the poor and dispossessed. But with fantastic rates of growth in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, is Femi Kuti, being overly pessimistic about Nigeria's prospects?

The election of a Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi as president of Egypt will have an impact not only on Egypt but also elsewhere in the Middle East. Nowhere more so perhaps than in Gaza. There, Hamas, which is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, has ruled for five years. Zeinab Badawi speaks to Ghazi Hamad, deputy foreign minister for Hamas in Gaza. At loggerheads with the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank and viewed by Israel as a terrorist organisation, will the new dynamics of power in Egypt better serve the cause of peace and reconciliation in the Middle East or merely exacerbate the tensions?

HARDtalk's Sarah Montague talks to the economic historian Niall Ferguson about the prospects for banking reform in the UK and USA after the investigation into Barclays and the manipulation of LIBOR rates by some banks.

Electoral politics is a bloodsport and some of the toughest fighters in the game are the campaign strategists who hone and sell the their candidates' message. Australian Lynton Crosby is widely regarded as one of the masters of the darker political arts, running winning campaigns in his native Australia for former prime minister John Howard. In the UK he twice helped Boris Johnson win the London Mayor's office. Opponents on the left have accused him of using grubby, divisive methods to further a conservative agenda.

Hardtalk is in the capital of Denmark, Copenhagen, which for the past six tumultuous months has held the presidency of the European Union. In that time, the number of Eurozone countries seeking an emergency financial bailout has risen to five. On the eve of yet another crisis summit, EU leaders face decisions that could make, or break the common currency. Stephen Sackur speaks to Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark’s Prime Minister. Is the dream of a common European future from Scandinavia to the Aegean well and truly over?

Mohamed Morsi has made history by becoming Egypt's first freely elected president, but how much power has he won? The image of tens of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters savouring victory in Tahrir Square can’t disguise the fact that Egypt is still governed by a military clique. Stephen Sackur talks to Gehad El-Haddad, an adviser to the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party. With Parliament dissolved, no new constitution written and the generals ringfencing their powers, has Egypt’s revolution run out of road?

With the London Olympics just weeks away, athletes are completing their final preparations - and that means fine tuning the mind as well as the body. In elite sport the title 'head coach' increasingly refers to the specialist hired to get inside the athlete's head to instil a winning mentality. Stephen Sackur talks to the psychiatrist Dr Steve Peters, consultant to the British Olympic cycling team and a highly prized adviser to a host of other famous sporting names. Is winning really all in the mind?

The Cannes Film Festival was criticised this year when all 22 films in the competition were directed by men. But Hollywood is not much better – a recent study found that less than 10% of its directors were women. Sarah Montague talks to Beeban Kidron, one of the few to have made the big time. She directed the second Bridget Jones movie, ‘The Edge of Reason’. But most of her other films concern far more radical material: a documentary about the anti-nuclear women protesters at Greenham Common, a TV adaptation of the lesbian novel ‘Oranges are not the only fruit’ and her latest documentary about India’s “sacred” prostitutes. Is it women and the choices they make that interest her the most?

Across Europe, politicians are struggling to answer a simple question; how does the continent find a way back to sustainable economic growth? Stephen Sackur talks to the UK Labour Party's top business spokesman, Chuka Umunna. He says active Government can revive and reshape capitalism. Are business leaders or the public ready to believe him?

Israel's secret service, the Mossad, is regarded as one of the most resourceful and ruthless intelligence agencies in the world. But are Israel's top spies on the same page as the country's politicians when it comes to an assessment of the threat posed by Iran? Stephen Sackur speaks to Meir Dagan, director of Mossad until a year and a half ago.