Stephen Sackur is the presenter of BBC HARDTalk - the most popular news interview programme in the world, with 70 million viewers. Before this, he was an award-winning BBC foreign correspondent covering landmark global events such as 9/11, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the civil war in Sri Lanka. In this in-depth interview, he takes us behind the scenes on the “crackling tension” in the HARDTalk studio; reflects on some of his career highlights, from the first ever on-screen interview with Hugo Chávez, to getting Dr Anthony Fauci’s take on America’s handling of the pandemic; and defends the “dying art” of the long-form interview, which remains “hugely important and very compelling.”