Amol Rajan Interviews - Episode Guide

In an in-depth interview, the BBC's media editor, Amol Rajan, speaks to Google's CEO Sundar Pichai about a wide range of issues, from the company's hotly debated privacy practices to its pioneering development in AI and quantum computing.

In an interview with Amol Rajan, Novak Djokovic opens up about his controversial decision to not have the Covid-19 vaccine and what effect that might have on his career.

In this probing hour-long interview, Amol Rajan speaks to actor Ian McKellen, one of the most celebrated performers of his generation and someone who has long defied convention and expectation.

Amol Rajan speaks to musician Nile Rodgers, discussing his childhood in 1960s New York, setting up Chic with his musical partner Bernard Edwards, and the racism that still troubles America.

Amol Rajan speaks to Sharon White, chairman of the John Lewis Partnership.

Overseeing a team of 80,000 partners working at branches and offices of supermarket Waitrose and department store John Lewis around the country, White took over the retailer in February 2020, just weeks before the coronavirus lockdown forced her to shut shops all over the UK. During her two years in the role, she has had to close 16 branches of John Lewis and make many staff redundant in response to the unprecedented economic circumstances of the time.

White tells Rajan about her upbringing in Leyton as the daughter of a Windrush generation family, her time at Cambridge University, her fast rise to the top of the civil service and her position as chief executive of media regulator Ofcom. After discussing topics like code-switching, class and social mobility, White and Rajan visit her childhood home and branches of John Lewis and Waitrose, before she shows him around the partnership's main distribution centre, Magna Park in Milton Keynes, to show him a vision of the future of online retail.

Amol Rajan talks to a true game changer: Billie Jean King. A record-breaking tennis player on the court, and a boundary-busting social activist off the court, King dominated tennis whilst campaigning to get the women's sport recognised and female athletes treated as equal to the men.

At her spiritual home of Wimbledon – where she holds the record for most career wins – King talks to Rajan about her lifelong battle for equality and inclusion, and how she has balanced her activism with both a record-breaking sports career and a tumultuous personal life.

In a tennis career spanning nearly 30 years, Billie Jean King became the first female sports superstar, winning 39 Grand Slam titles and holding the world number one position for six years.

As the first female athlete-activist, King transformed the women's game. She and eight other renegades created professional women's tennis when they started the first ever women's tennis tour in 1971. King then co-founded the Women's Tennis Association and forced the US Open to become the first Grand Slam tournament to offer equal prize money to its male and female players.

During the 1970s, while at the very top of her game and height of her activism, King was contending with intense turmoil in her private life. News of an abortion she had was made public against her will, at a time before the Roe v Wade ruling made legal abortion a constitutional right in the US. Meanwhile, she struggled to come to terms with her homosexuality while married to a man, before being publicly outed. In 1981, King became the first prominent professional female athlete to speak publicly about her homosexuality and, as a result, lost all her endorsements overnight.

In discussing her extraordinary life, Billie Jean King and Amol Rajan also touch on topical issues such as the sport world's response to the war in Ukraine, trans athletes and mental health matters.

Amol Rajan talks to 19-year old Greta Thunberg, the climate activist who has become the unlikely voice of a global youth.

Thunberg isn't a politician or a scientist, nor is she the first to campaign against climate change. However, since overcoming severe childhood depression to focus the world's attention on the plight of the planet, the Swedish student has become symbol for a generation which – as she puts it – is not being listened to by older people who won't suffer the consequences.

In a challenging and wide-ranging conversation, Rajan discusses with Thunberg her latest book and interrogates some of the solutions it posits to tackle climate change. They explore green policy, climate justice, greenwashing and the role of both politics and protest in effecting change. Thunberg also shares the personal cost she has paid in being a global game-changer and offers a rare insight into the real Greta Thunberg.

Billionaire Bill Gates talks to Amol Rajan about wealth, conspiracy theories and recent controversies. They visit a remote region outside Nairobi in Kenya, where Gates supports local farms and hospitals through his charitable foundation, for a rare, in-depth interview with the tech entrepreneur.

Gates has spent much of his life being the richest man on earth. He excelled at school, founded Microsoft and helped to realise his vision of having a computer on every desk in every home. His public image has changed over the years, from geek to business titan and philanthropist. In recent years, he has become the subject of endless conspiracy theories and has attracted unfavourable headlines on the subject of his divorce and his association with Jeffrey Epstein. In this challenging and personal interview, Rajan tackles these issues head-on, talking to Gates about his early success, his wealth, how he uses it now, and the controversies that have arisen over the years. In this unusually candid interview, Gates is often revealing in his responses.

Amol Rajan joins Sir Richard Branson on one of his cruise ships in Miami to discuss his life, loves, passions and challenges.

In a sometimes uncomfortable interview with rarely seen archive footage, Rajan delves into Branson's background to discover how he went from 60s hippy to global business icon, reshaping multiple industries and ending up in space.

In a revealing interview about Piers Morgan's rollercoaster career and personal life, Amol Rajan explores everything from hacking allegations to the divisive media figure's belief in God.

From sackings to superstardom, from being punched by Jeremy Clarkson to his role in the culture wars, Morgan reveals the emotional and physical scars he has picked up over the decades.

Amol Rajan interviews Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two journalists at the heart of the Watergate scandal, about the fall of Nixon, the presidency of Trump, the state of America and the world today.

In this wide-ranging and in-depth interview, Rajan questions the pair on some of the most important issues of modern times and explores the parallels between recent events and the scandal that eventually led to the resignation of the 37th US president.

The actor Brian Cox – star of the drama Succession – sits down with Amol Rajan to reveal the secrets of the show and what took him from poverty in Dundee all the way to Hollywood.

The award-winning theatre, television and film actor reveals what really happens on set, his thoughts on the method acting technique used by one of his co-stars, and his best and worst moments since the show first aired in 2018.

Amol Rajan sits down with Ronnie O'Sullivan – widely regarded as the greatest snooker player of all time – to discuss his incredible life both on and away from the table.

Amol Rajan sits down with Dame Sheila Hancock – a pioneer of stage and screen who rewrote the rules of comedy, women and the working class.