The Interview

“I had hired a CEO for the last two years. The company was at a place where revenue had plateaued. I wasn’t someone who could look at a spreadsheet 50 tabs wide and tell my CFO what to do. I was definitely out of my league and I didn’t like that job, and a lot of different things happened before we ended up filing for bankruptcy.”

Leanna Byrne speaks to Sophia Amoruso, founder of online fashion retailer Nasty Gal.

What began as a one-woman eBay shop selling vintage clothes became one of online fashion’s most recognisable brands. Within a few years, Nasty Gal was valued at $350 million, bringing expectations that it would grow like a technology company and become a billion-dollar business.

Sophia reflects on feeling out of her depth running the company, criticism of its workplace culture and the decisions that led to bankruptcy.

The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC, including episodes with Sundar Pichai and Julia Gillard.

You can listen on the BBC World Service on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 0800 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out three times a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.

Presenter: Leanna Byrne
Producer: Osman Iqbal
Editor: Damon Rose
(Image: Sophia Amoruso. Credit: Araya Doheny/Getty)

“We don’t have another way for surviving, because we are an independent state, it's our territory, it's our land, it’s our culture, it’s our history, and we must fight to prevent the full occupation by the Russian Federation our territory.”
Dan Johnson speaks to Vadym Skibitsky, deputy chief of the GUR, Ukraine’s military intelligence service, about the ongoing war with Russia.
Formed shortly after Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the GUR is tasked with defending the country at home and abroad through the use of political and military intelligence.
Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the service has played a key role in holding off and pushing back Kyiv’s larger neighbour through activities including intelligence gathering, espionage and sabotage. As the war gears up to enter another harsh winter with no obvious end in sight, both sides continue to look for new ways to break the deadlock.
In this exclusive, wide-ranging interview, Skibitsky discusses Russia’s use of North Korean troops and military hardware in the war. He also talks about Ukraine's latest strategy of deep-range drone strikes thousands of kilometres into Russia, and how its military plans to grind down Moscow.

The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC, including episodes with journalist Dmitry Muratov, former Sudanese leader Aisha Musa, and Ukrainian drone commander Robert Brovdi. You can listen on the BBC World Service on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 0800 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out three times a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.
Presenter: Dan Johnson
Producer: Anastassia Levchenko
Editor: Damon Rose
Get in touch with us on email TheInterview@bbc.co.uk and use the hashtag #TheInterviewBBC on social media.
(Image: Vadym Skibitsky. Credit: Vitalii Nosach/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

“Let's go back to the timeframe with the internet building out. We didn’t have an issue that the internet 20 years later is not a valuable utility… If you don't have access to a smartphone, try to get into a sporting event or a concert - it’s not going to happen. That's the internet at its backbone. So artificial intelligence will be the same. It's going to be table stakes for everything that we do. We may see a short-term bump in the road or some pause or whatever you want to call it, and then people will freak out and say ‘AI's dead’, which is complete nonsense because it's only going to get better from here and it's going be a greater utility. So I don't worry about it too much.”
Faisal Islam speaks to Rene Haas, CEO of UK-based computer chip firm Arm Holdings, about the current boom in the industry being driven by the growth of AI and data centres.
Although some people may not be familiar with the Arm name, their silicon chips are present almost everywhere - from smartphones all the way up to supercomputers.
Founded in the early 1990s, the firm began its life operating out of an old turkey barn in the English countryside near Cambridge. As technology shrank and became increasingly mobile, Arm, whose main focus is the design of efficient chips, positioned themselves at the heart of the tech revolution.
It is now mostly owned by a large Japanese tech investment group and their chips can be found in almost every part of modern life - from smartphones and cameras through to cars and supercomputers.
With the AI revolution continuing apace, analysts have said that Arm will have a key role to play in the coming years.

The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC, including episodes with AI expert Parmy Olson, Hinge CEO Jackie Jantos, and McKinsey China’s Jo Ngai. You can listen on the BBC World Service on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 0800 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out three times a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.
Presenter: Faisal Islam
Producers: Ben Cooper, Priya Patel and Danielle Codd
Editor: Damon Rose
Get in touch with us on email TheInterview@bbc.co.uk and use the hashtag #TheInterviewBBC on social media.
(Image: Rene Haas. Credit: Getty)

“People just wanted to own the way they worked, but with that comes these institutional structures that have been built around the history of work that doesn’t allow for benefits programs or paid time off, or insurance. So there were all these things I knew that weighed on me. It wasn’t a perfect system.”

The BBC’s Sarah Rogers speaks to Leah Solivan, founder and former chief executive of TaskRabbit, an app that connects people who need one-off tasks done by workers they can hire easily. Typical tasks include: errands, gardening, moving and furniture assembly.

Founded in 2008, TaskRabbit helped pioneer the gig economy, giving workers greater control over when and how they worked.

But that flexibility often came without the benefits associated with traditional employment. Leah reflects on the gaps in the model she helped create, why she believes TaskRabbit could have acted sooner, and what led her to sell the company to IKEA.

The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC, including episodes with tech billionaire Reid Hoffman and Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, head of the World Trade Organisation.

You can listen on the BBC World Service on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 0800 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out three times a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.

Presenter: Sarah Rogers
Producer: Osman Iqbal
Editor: Damon Rose

BBC Newsnight presenter Paddy O’Connell speaks to Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu about why he thinks liberal democracy is in crisis, and how artificial intelligence could make it worse.
Daron argues that liberal democracy worked because people were given a say in how they were governed and then benefited from their country’s economy as it prospered.
But western governments have made major decisions on issues like immigration without first building public agreement, something which was once important.
In an interview with BBC Newsnight, he says that together, these changes have left many working people feeling that politicians no longer listen to them and have helped to fuel a rise in populism.
Now Daron warns that the way artificial intelligence is developed and used, so far without consensus, could make it worse, by widening inequality and putting people out of work.
“AI is going to transform every aspect of our lives, and we're not being asked. We have no say in how AI is going to shape our society. I mean people in the UK, people in the US. Even worse for 6 billion people who are outside of the US, UK, China. Their lives are going to be completely reshaped by AI and they have zero say whatsoever,” he says.

The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC, including episodes with Indian activist Sonam Wangchuk, South African minister Gayton McKenzie and New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman.
You can listen on the BBC World Service on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 0800 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out three times a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.

Presenter: Paddy O’Connell
Producer: Osman Iqbal
Editor: Damon Rose
(Image: Daron Acemoglu. Credit: Europa Press News via Getty Images)