The Interview12 Loka 2025

Malala Yousafzai, global education campaigner: I did not know who I was

I was 15 years old and I did not know who I was

Madina Maishanu speaks to Malala Yousafzai, the global education activist, about the public life that has defined her, and her search for her own identity.

In a deeply personal interview, Malala Yousafzai reveals the legacy of her teenage years - as the spirited girl who took on the Taliban and nearly lost her life, then the Nobel Prize-winning advocate for girls everywhere to go to school. People think they know you, she says, but I did not know who I was.

Now, aged 28, she reveals the lasting impact on her mental health and how she’s been helped by therapy and by friendship, putting the loneliness of her teens behind her.

For Malala Yousafzai, the mission of her life remains ensuring every girl has the right to go to school, a goal that has driven her since she was a child growing up in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. Critical of the ruling Taliban, she survived an assassination attempt at their hands before fleeing to England to continue her education, ultimately at Oxford University.

Thank you to Madina Maishanu and Yousef Eldin for their help in making this programme. The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC. You can listen on the BBC World Service, Mondays and Wednesdays at 0700 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out twice a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.

Presenter: Madina Maishanu Producers: Yousef Eldin, Lucy Sheppard and Farhana Haider Editor: Justine Lang

Get in touch with us on email TheInterview@bbc.co.uk and use the hashtag #TheInterviewBBC on social media

(Image: Malala Yousafzai Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for IMDb)

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(1954)

Mopreme Shakur on Tupac: The sensitive man behind the music

“I think Pac was actually traumatised by the poverty. You know, poverty can be very, very traumatic. Having no lights, having no food from time to time, having no clothes while you’re going to school,...

20 Elo 22min

Hunter Biden: Father’s pardon not good for country

“Was it good for our Constitution? Was it good for the American people? Was it good for my dad's legacy? No, on all counts. It was not. All I know is that I'm grateful that he did it for me.” BBC Ne...

18 Elo 23min

Celeste Saulo, WMO: Extreme weather is the new normal

“[This weather] is a new norm, and we need to make sure that we are prepared to deal with that…these extreme wildfires put more responsibility onto improving our forecasting tools to support the briga...

16 Elo 23min

Dmitry Muratov, journalist: Putin can’t claim victory in Ukraine

"There are repressions, political repressions, against freedom of speech, against elections, against the rights of citizens to hold mass events. To such an extent that we don't know what the real publ...

13 Elo 22min

Yemi Alade, singer: I wanted to be a mega superstar

“I just knew that I wanted to be a mega superstar and I didn't know how…I feel like Africa chose me before I even chose Africa, and I feel music chose me before I chose music.”Nkechi Ogbonna speaks to...

11 Elo 22min

Sonam Wangchuk, Indian activist: Hunger strike for education reform

“This movement was by young people who had hardly anything to lose. We had no fear and that's what spread across the country and today people are raising their voices. This time it stopped at the educ...

9 Elo 23min

Carlos Acosta, dancer: Ballet is for everyone

“It's very important that we expose this work early on, so that people from different cultures see ballet as a way of a career. But in the 1990s or 2000s, it was pretty much closed, we didn't have - e...

6 Elo 24min

Srinivasan Muralidhar: The trauma of Palestinian children

‘When it comes to humanitarian crisis, we should not allow children's future to be subject to geopolitics. We can't say that there are politically compulsions as a result of which we are allowing chil...

4 Elo 25min