DECLINE OF THE WEST, LIVE ON BBC:

The interview is a dead medium, mostly because nobody alive today—whether interviewer or interviewee—is interesting enough to hold most people’s attention. Occasionally, a public figure comes along with enough of a personality and intellect to almost merit watching (think Boris Johnson); or an host presents enough raw energy to draw a captive audience and hide the lack of substance (like Joe Rogan); or the sheer weirdness of a subject reels a few people in (Bruce Caitlyn Jenner on Hannity).

Every once in a while though, somebody actually says something worthwhile, and the rarity alone of such occurrences means that people will take notice. The source of such a standout, too, is often unexpected—as in the case of Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev, a clip of whose November interview with BBC journalist Orla Guerin went viral last week on Twitter. Aliyev—who, despite his reputation as a pro-Western moderate Muslim, is hardly known as a champion of civil liberties and democratic values—is not the first person one would expect to speak with moral clarity about the state of free society in 2021.