Born in Dvinsk, Russia (now Daugavpils, Latvia) Rothko moved with his family to Portland, Oregon in 1913. His painting education was brief - he moved to New York to study under the artist Max Weber and then struck out on his own. Rothko is known for his abstract expressionism paintings, but he moved through more traditional styles in his early career, including Surrealist paintings in the 1940s. In 1947 he embarked on the first of his large abstract 'colour-field' paintings, formalising their structure further in the 1950s. Rothko had huge success with largescale solo shows, but committed suicide in 1970.

Prof. Susan Greenfield (Univ. of Oxford) discusses what it is that makes humans different from the rest of the animal world. She focuses on the human ability to work towards long-term goals and observes the results of damage to the frontal lobe of the brain, which seems to be the location of this skill. But planning is not a uniquely human skill - chimpanzees in a study by the University of Georgia demonstrated that they too can do this. Humans, however, have developed language which accounts for the rapid development of our culture; but some scientists argue that chimps, too, are capable of acquiring language. There seems to be a missing link between chimpanzees and humans, indicated by the post-Neanderthal appearance of new kinds of tools indicating a development from modular mental ability to lateral thinking. Among those taking part in the programme are Dr. Adrian Owen (MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge) and Prof. Michael Gazzaniga (Dartmouth College, New Hampshire U.S).

Anna Wintour, Editor American Vogue Anna Wintour, British-born doyenne of American Vogue, is reputedly the world's most powerful fashion editor. This compelling documentary provides a window on the inside world of glamour and power at the highest possible level. It asks what it is like to work for Anna and explores how she is perceived by the fashion industry.

Pauline Clare, Police Constable 53-year-old Chief Constable Pauline Clare made history four years ago when she was appointed the first female Police Chief Constable in the 80 years since women were first admitted to the Police Force in Britain. The film follows Pauline Clare as her force tackle drug-related crime and plan the security for the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool.

The Curry Queen Perween Warsi, also known as The Curry Queen, is the second richest Asian businesswomen in Britain. A mere 13 years ago, she was selling samosas from the small kitchen of her Derby home. Today, her business has an annual turnover of ú100 million, and in 1997 Perween was awarded an MBE for her services to the food industry. Boss Women follows Perween as she develops new dishes for the supermarket Safeway, and follows her search for a site for a new factory.

He was only 18 when he made his first million. Today he is the boss of the international company Virgin Enterprises and nobody can stop him. Richard Branson is one of the richest men in Britain and he is definitely one of its most eccentric and courageous entrepreneurs. Richard Branson began his entrepreneurial trajectory in the 70s, making money from what was then a hobby. With the success of the album "Tubular Bells" which he produced he launched a music label, Virgin Records, and stars like the Rolling Stones, U2, Janet Jackson and Phil Collins came flocking to a label that seemed to nurture creativity. Today, Virgin Enterprises runs a huge number of businesses - from condoms to airlines. More than 50.000 people work for Virgin, despite the fact that Branson claims to not know how to use a personal computer. His strengths lie in founding new enterprises, not necessarily in leading them himself, and moving on to the next challenge.

E-Bay is the quintessential global market. This lively film travels from a small town in Germany, to the island of Sky, to a dusty village in Mexico and then to bustling cities in China to show how individuals all over the world are using the internet to buy and sell. Of course, not everyone is making a bundle. Some offerings don't sell at their price and have to be re-listed, at a cost. But the film shows that opportunities abound. An unemployed family in Germany is starting to make a living as traders. As the narrator says, nationality, race, education, skin color, all these differences fade away on the internet. E-bay is shown celebrating its 10th anniversary in San Jose, California with great festivities and acclaim. With all its success, it is beginning to face a challenge in the Chinese market where an ambitious competitor is steadily growing.

Niall Ferguson visits New Orleans to explore how insurance can be inadequate cover for catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina, looking at what happens when the state is forced to step in. He examines the development of the welfare system in post-war Japan and studies Chilean reforms in the 1970s and 1980s, before assessing the role of hedge funds as reliable protection against an uncertain future.

Adolescent boys struggle to grow up in a home for juvenile delinquents in rural Russia, where life behind bars may be better than the release to freedom. Filmmaker Alexandra Westmeier provides an intimate glimpse at a society from the inside out, where boys under the age of 14 are held for crimes ranging from theft to rape to multiple murders. They receive food and clothing. They go to school and engage in sports. For the first time in their young lives, they no longer have to fight for their daily existence; they can simply be what they are--children.Like many of the boys here, Tolya, a murderer, recounts his crimes with unnerving nonchalance. Nonetheless, moments come through in each lad’s speech or mannerisms that reveal the child within the criminal. A 13-year-old newbie is not even allowed to say good-bye to his mother. He fights back tears that somehow reflect the sorrows of all his comrades.

Joe is 19, he went into care 5 years ago when his relationship with his mother broke down. Jamaal went into care aged 9 and grew up in a children’s homes and in foster placements. Emma is an orphan and lives in a home with other children in care. When she turns 18 she will have to move out and live it alone.Each year 6000 young people leave social services care. After growing up in children’s homes or with foster parents the transition to independent living is hugely fraught. A young person who has been in care is 10 times more likely to go to prison than go to university. A quarter of young women leaving care are pregnant or already have children. Within two years of leaving care and moving in on their own, one in five teenagers will be come homeless.Into the Big Wide World follows a groundbreaking project to take Joe, Emma Jamaal and 8 other teenagers to work as volunteers in South Africa. For these young people trying to grow up without Mum or Dad, this project could change their lives forever.

Born in Naples, Bernini was an exceptional talent from an early age and went on to dominate the art world of 17th century Rome. His work epitomised the Baroque style and his sculpture, church interiors and exteriors and town planning could be seen everywhere. He was also a painter, playwright, costume and theatre designer. Bernini worked under successive Popes; Pope Gregory XV made him a knight and Pope Urban VIII took him as his best friend. He was revered in his time until a jealous rage caused him to have the face of his mistress slashed after discovering her romance with his brother. His reputation fell further after his bell towers for the Cathedral of St Peter's started cracking in 1641. He redeemed himself and kick started his career again with arguably his most famous work, The Ecstasy of St Theresa, in 1652.

Born in Malaga, Spain, Picasso's many styles and prolific work rate have marked him out as one of the most recognised artists of the twentieth century. Not limited to one medium he created sculptures, etchings and prints. His artistic career only began to boom once he moved to Paris in the early 1900s. His Blue Period, reflecting the colour and his mood at the time was followed by his Rose Period, work inspired by primitive art and then Cubism, which shocked the critics, but ultimately made his name. Guernica (1937) was created during Picasso's Surrealist period and captures the horror of the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. By the end of World War II, Picasso had become an internationally known artist and celebrity. Simon Schama on Picasso - "Pablo Picasso's Guernica is so familiar, so large, so present. It's physically bigger than a movie screen. But what is the painting about? Is it an account of the Spanish town obliterated by Nazi warplanes - a piece of reportage? Is that why it's in black and white? This is the reason why the painting has such an impact. Instead of a laboured literal commentary on German warplanes, Basque civilians and incendiary bombs, Picasso connects with our worst nightmares. He's saying here's where the world's horror comes from; the dark pit of our psyche."

A year on from Barack Obama's inauguration, Simon Schama examines the issue that more than any other will determine the fate of his presidency: Afghanistan. It's a war which Obama inherited but which he has pledged to continue fighting - a conflict that will cost many more American and British lives. As Simon Schama explains, it wasn't just a political miscalculation which landed the US and its allies in military crisis, but a historical miscalculation - a refusal to learn from the conflicts of the past. By committing America and its allies to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, George Bush and the neocons allowed the battle against the Taliban to slide. The neocons were obsessed with World War Two, and persuaded themselves that both wars would - like the Second World War - be glorious liberations; decisive military victories. However, as Schama discovers, it's not to World War II, but to America's forgotten war in Korea, that US policymakers should have looked if they wanted to understand the thorny reality of America's twentieth-century conflicts. The president who took America into Korea was Harry Truman. As Simon Schama explains, in Truman's handling of this bloody war, and in his statesmanship at a time of international crisis, there are profound lessons for Obama today.

Born in Groot-Zundert, The Netherlands, Van Gogh spent his early life as an art dealer, teacher and preacher in England, Holland and Belgium. His period as an artist began in 1881 when he chose to study art in Brussels, starting with watercolours and moving quickly on to oils. The French countryside was a major influence on his life and his early work was dominated by sombre, earthy colours depicting peasant workers, the most famous of which is The Potato Eaters, 1885. It was during Van Gogh's studies in Paris (1886-8) that he developed the individual style of brushwork and use of colour that made his name. In 1888 he moved to Arles where the Provençal landscape provided his best-known subject matter. However, it also marked the start of his mental crisis following an argument with his contemporary Paul Gauguin. Van Gogh was committed to a mental asylum in 1889 where he continued to paint, but he committed suicide in 1890. In this episode, Simon Schama examines his masterpiece Wheatfield with Crows. "Vincent's passionate belief was that people wouldn't just see his pictures, but would feel the rush of life in them; that by the force of his brush and dazzling colour they'd experience those fields, faces and flowers in ways that nothing more polite or literal could ever convey. His art would reclaim what had once belonged to religion - consolation for our mortality through the relish of the gift of life. It wasn't the art crowd he was after; he wanted was to open the eyes and the hearts of everyone who saw his paintings. I feel he got what he wanted. So what are we looking at with this painting? There’s suffocation, but elation too. The crows might be coming at us, but equally they might be flying away, demons gone as we immerse ourselves in the power of nature. It's a massive wall of writhing brilliant paint, in which the colour itself seems to tremble and pulse and sway."

Born to a wealthy Parisian family, Jacques-Louis David was aged seven when his father was shot dead in a pistol duel. Brought up by his uncles, his desire was to paint and he was eventually sent to his mother's cousin, Francois Boucher, the most successful painter in France at the time. Painting became an important means of communication for David since his face was slashed during a sword fight and his speech became impeded by a benign tumour that developed from the wound, leading him to stammer. He was interested in painting in a new classical style that departed from the frivolity of the Rococo period and reflected the moral and austere climate before the French Revolution. David became closely aligned with the republican government and his work was increasingly used as propaganda with the Death of Marat proving his most controversial work. Simon Schama on David. "If there's ever a picture that would make you want to die for a cause, it is Jacque-Louis David's Death of Marat. That's what makes it so dangerous - hidden away from view for so many years. I'm not sure how I feel about this painting, except deeply conflicted. You can't doubt that it's a solid gold masterpiece, but that's to separate it from the appalling moment of its creation, the French Revolution. This is Jean-Paul Marat, the most paranoid of the Revolution's fanatics, exhaling his very last breath. He's been assassinated in his bath. But for David, Marat isn't a monster, he's a saint. This is martyrdom, David's manifesto of revolutionary virtue."

Born to a family of millers in Leiden, Rembrandt left university at 14 to pursue a career as an artist. The decision turned out to be a good one since after serving his apprenticeship in Amsterdam he was singled out by Constantijn Huygens, the most influential patron in Holland. In 1634 he married Saskia van Uylenburgh. In 1649, following Saskia's death from tuberculosis, Hendrickje Stoffels entered Rembrandt's household and six years later they had a son. Rembrandt's success in his early years was as a portrait painter to the rich denizens of Amsterdam at a time when the city was being transformed from a small nondescript port into the economic capital of the world. His historical and religious paintings also gave him wide acclaim. Despite being known as a portrait painter Rembrandt used his talent to push the boundaries of painting. This direction made him unpopular in the later years of his career as he shifted from being the talk of the town to becoming adrift in the Amsterdam art scene and criticised by his peers.

Michelangelo Merisi left his birth town of Caravaggio in the north of Italy to study as an apprentice in nearby Milan. In 1593 he moved to Rome, impatient to use his talents on the biggest stage possible. Caravaggio's approach to painting was unconventional. He avoided the standard method of making copies of old sculptures and instead took the more direct approach of painting directly onto canvas without drawing first. He also used people from the street as his models. His dramatic painting was enhanced with intense and theatrical lighting. Caravaggio's fate was sealed when in 1606 he killed a man in a duel. He fled to Naples where he attempted to paint his way out of trouble, he became a Knight, but was then imprisoned in Malta and then finally he moved to Sicily. He was pardoned for murder in 1610, but he died of a fever attempting to return to Rome.

One of Britain's most celebrated artists, JMW Turner showed exceptional artistic talent from an early age and entered the Royal Academy aged fourteen. His English landscapes made his name but there was a darker side to his paintings that was difficult for the critics to swallow, both in the increasingly informal use of paint and the subject matter that was critical of the romanticised vision of Britain in the late nineteenth century. Turner bequeathed 300 of his paintings and 20,000 watercolours and drawings to the nation. He led a secretive private life. He never married, but had a mistress and fathered two children. He died in a temporary lodging in Chelsea, under the assumed name of Booth. Simon Schama on Turner. "In 1840 in London, an international convention of the Great and Good was planned to express righteous indignation against slavery in the United States. Turner, initiated into the cause many years before by his patron, Walter Fawkes, wanted to have his say in paint. So how does he do it? By being a thorn in the side of self congratulation. He reaches back 60 years to resurrect one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the British Empire when 132 Africans - men, women and children, their hands and feet fettered - were thrown overboard into the shark infested waters of the Caribbean. And Turner has drowned you in this moment, pulled you into this terrifying chasm in the ocean, drenched you in this bloody light - exactly the hue you sense in your blood filled optic nerves when you close your eyes in blinding sunlight. Though almost all of his critics believed that the painting represented an all time low in Turner's reckless disregard for the rules of art, it was in fact his greatest triumph in the sculptural carving of space."

New Zealand documentary that captures candid thoughts and philosophies from, and about teenagers. Directed and produced by Robyn Scott-Vincent ; series executive producer, Sue Woodfield.

There is hardly a place in the world where nobody is wearing jeans. There are countless myths and legends that have developed around the invention of blue jeans. The film takes the audience on a trip back to the past. It explores the exciting and thrilling days of Lola Montez and Buffalo Bill, and reconstructs young Levi Strauss’s arduous journey from Buttenheim via Bremerhaven to New York and San Francisco.

Pianists have always regarded the concert grands of Steinway & Sons as the best in the world, which is why these instruments stand in 98 per cent of all concert halls across the globe. They are still produced mainly by hand in Steinway’s factories in New York and Hamburg and comprise more than 12,000 individual parts. The scenic documentary “Henry Steinway – Birth of a Legend” by Christopher Weinert tells the moving story of Heinrich Engelhardt Steinweg, who emigrated to America from the German town Seesen in the Harz in the mid-19th century and advanced in his new home town New York to become the most famous piano maker of all times.

The series on the global crash examines the boom years before the bust. With testimony from many of the key decision makers who shaped our lives over the last two decades, including Gordon Brown, governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King, and an exclusive interview with former chairman of the US Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, it charts how the financial bubble grew and grew. The programme explains how we changed our attitude to risk, learnt to live with debt and, above all, how governments stepped back from regulating any of it. At the heart of the story is Alan Greenspan, who for 20 years was one of the most powerful people in the world. In October 2008, weeks after the catastrophic collapse of Lehman Brothers, the man whose ideas influenced the world admitted he might have been 'partially' wrong. Series producer, Michael Tuft ; directed by Tim Robinson ; narrator, Alex Jennings.

From hobby gardener to millionaire: Henry John Heinz, the son of German immigrants, becomes not only one of the most successful food producers with his mother’s recipes, but also one of the best salesmen in the world. With everyday products like gherkins, sauerkraut and his famous ketchup, he has changed the eating habits of America and the world. “Henry John Heinz – Ketchup King” is the portrait of an unusual man of many talents, a man who goes through many trials and tribulations, and who founds a company that now counts as one of the big brands in the world.

Oh, he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone was Ebenezer Scrooge. A squeezing, grasping, clutching, covetous old sinner.” This is the man every child thinks of when it hears the name Ebenezer Scrooge, the main character in Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”. Far less well-known is the real-life person the character is based on: John Jacob Astor. The fact that he did not only make history for being a miser can be seen in the film “John Jacob Astor – America’s richest man”. The film “John Jacob Astor – America’s richest man” is a breathtaking trip to a world of danger and adventure, full of new ideas and opportunities. It is a film about one of the most famous names in the world, whose namegiver has almost been completely forgotten.

Ever since he was at school, actor and comedian Alan Davies has hated maths. And like many people, he is not much good at it either. But Alan has always had a sneaking suspicion that he was missing out. So, with the help of top mathematician Professor Marcus du Sautoy, Alan is going to embark on a maths odyssey. Together they visit the fourth dimension, cross the universe and explore the concept of infinity. Along the way, Alan does battle with some of the toughest maths questions of our age. But did his abilities peak 25 years ago when he got his grade C O-Level? Or will Alan be able to master the most complex maths concept there is? Presenters, Marcus du Sautoy, Alan Davis ; Producer & director, Dan Walker.

DescriptionWarren Buffett is the greatest investor of all time. His decisions about buying shares and companies have beaten the stock market year after year and made him the richest person in the world - thought to be worth 37 billion dollars. Yet Buffett lives modestly in his native Omaha, in America\'s mid-West, and runs his 150 billion dollar business with a staff of just twenty. Evan Davis meets him to find out about his unique investment strategy and his eccentric lifestyle. He talks to Buffett\'s family, friends and colleagues about the man they call the Sage of Omaha, and Buffett\'s friend Bill Gates praises his philosophy of life. As the greed of the super-wealthy is widely criticised in the current financial crisis, Davis asks whether Warren Buffett is the acceptable face of the filthy rich. Poduced, directed and narrated by Charles Miller.

Journey with Tthe Future Express from the former Yugoslavian capital Belgrade, to Kosovo, the youngest nation in Europe. Hear the stories of Serbian and Albanian train travelers, with varying perspectives on post-war life. On February 17, 2008, parliament proclaimed Kosovo's independence. People rejoiced in the streets and fell into each other's arms. For many years the Albanian population of Kosovo lived under the yoke of the Serbians; many were either deported or left the country in search of refuge. The stationmaster of Pristina recounts the night he was rounded up on the train platform of the capital city together with thousands of others. Heavily armed Serbians were using trains to deport Albanians. "They all had to hand in their belongings. We were packed in a compartment, we could hardly breathe." Listen to their stories in this episode of The Future Express.

In the month that followed the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, the world stared into the abyss of total financial collapse. The third part of the BBC's definitive series on the crash tells the extraordinary story of how politicians reacted, and asks what has been learnt from the entire calamity. Could it happen again? With unrivalled contributions from the key decision makers including US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Gordon Brown and five other finance ministers, the programme pieces together the details of an extraordinary moment in history, when the world faced its greatest financial crisis. Series producer, Michael Tuft ; directed by Paul Mitchell ; narrator, Alex Jennings.

In September 2008, the collapse of Lehman Brothers tipped the world into recession. A cast of contributors including national leaders, finance ministers and CEOs describe the tense negotiations in New York and London as the investment institution headed towards bankruptcy. Gordon Brown, Tim Geithner and Alistair Darling reveal the dilemmas they faced and the decisions they took. One year on, the programme explains why the collapse of one bank had such disastrous consequences for the world's economy. Series producer, Michael Tuft ; directed by Guy Smith ; narrator, Alex Jennings.

The second episode in the series explores the conflicting theories of how Shakespeare spent the ten years between his marriage to Anne Hathaway and his emergence as a star writer in London.

In the final episode of his historical detective story, Michael Wood uncovers the story of Shakespeare's life in the "New Age" of King James I.

Episode 1 examines Shakespeare's life in the early years of Elizabeth's reign at the beginning of her cultural revolution.

There's an airy spirit of existential enquiry floating through Luit Bieringa's lovely portrait of Wellington art-dealer Peter McLeavey. A fundamental biographer's question - what makes this guy tick? - is quietly turned back on us by a subject who seems to live out a highly ordered daily existence in a state of perpetual curiosity about what makes any of us tick, himself included, in this corner of the world. Starting out as a dealer from his bedroom flat in 1966, McLeavey was already championing Toss Woollaston, Colin McCahon and Gordon Walters as purveyors of vision informed by New Zealand experience. He opened his two-room dealer gallery at 147 Cuba Street in 1968. Forty years and 500 or so exhibitions later he's still there. Cinematographer Leon Narbey follows the dapper man in a hat from his home in Hill Street on the circuitous scenic route he takes each morning to work. Bieringa intersperses this lyrical picture of McLeavey's Wellington with readings from his correspondence and frank, revealing conversations with the man himself.

Alan Yentob explores the magical and mysterious world of the best-selling children's author Roald Dahl to discover what made him such a great storyteller. This intimate portrait has exclusive access to his personal archive and features interviews with members of his immediate family, including his widow, Felicity, his first wife, the actress Patricia Neal, his children Tessa, Theo and Ophelia, and his granddaughter, the model Sophie Dahl.

Take ten volunteers, half have psychiatric disorders, the other half don't - but who is who? Over five days the group are put through a series of challenges - from performing stand-up comedy to mucking out cows. The events are designed to explore the character traits of mental illness and ask whether the symptoms might be within all of us. Three leading experts in mental health attempt to spot which volunteers have been diagnosed with a mental health condition. But will the individuals who have suffered from mental illness reveal themselves? Part 1 of 2.

This film for BBC's One Life looks at a radical new initiative to tackle childhood bullying: peer mediation. Visiting Heatherbrook Primary School in Leicester, it looks at several children's experiences of bullying, from their own point of view. Eight year old Jordan's big 'Dumbo' ears make him different to his mates, giving them an obvious nickname to taunt him with. Jordan is often alone in the playground, running around the periphery of games, being told he can't play, being pushed from one side of the playground to the other. "Everytime I'm being bullied, I look up at the sky and just say in my head, 'I wish I wish there were no bullies around, not ever'." Eight year old Stephanie has even thought about killing herself. Two experts are coming into the school to select and train a team of "peer mediators". Once on the job these pint-sized peacekeepers will be on duty every break and lunchtime to try to defuse minor disputes before they escalate into something far worse. The film follows a group of children as they go through the process of selection, training and starting on the job. The BBC's One Life series looks at the issue in depth this evening. "Beating the Bullies" takes us into the secret world of a junior school playground through the kids' eyes and shows us just what the reality of school bullying is.

It all began when a small recording studio opened in an old bus depot in the seaside town of Devonport. Producer Rikki Morris blames a teenaged Finn Andrews who wandered in off the street and asked to record a demo. As soon as he heard that voice, Rikki says he knew that Finn Andrews was going to be a star. Before long, Finn was signed in the UK with his band, The Veils - but that was just the beginning! News travels fast in small towns they say, and in Devonport, the possibility of becoming a rock star suddenly became an 'achievable dream' in the minds of the young locals. At the nearby high schools, lunchtimes were taken up with jamming with whoever was around, and absorbing the lessons of 60s and 70s rock history from mum and dad's dusty collection. Bands were formed, The Bus studio became the place to be, and the 'achievable dreams' started to happen. Filmed over 18 months, the film takes up the stories of three of these bands - The Checks, the Electric Confectionaires, and White Birds & Lemons, who each have their own take on the lessons of 'the old masters' of their parents era. The documentary features recording sessions, impromptu jams, and indoor and outdoor gigs on the journey toward every guitar band's dream. Amidst the music and impromptu comedy, Rikki Morris and the band members share insights on the inner workings of bands, and the prospects and process of 'making it'. While there are currently over 40 bands who now use the old bus depot as their practice/recording space, the three featured bands are at the core of the 'Devonport band phenomenon' - two of them have been signed to international labels, and all three bands have played at The Big Day Out.

The first comprehensive television biography of Jane Austen, the first indisputable genius of the English novel. This definitive documentary will satisfy the surge of interest in her life following the acclaimed BBC adaptations of Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, and forthcoming productions of Emma Thompson's Sense and Sensibility and at least two Emmas. Fast paced and witty, this film visits the stately home of her brothers, the ballrooms of her friends, and the beach at Sidmouth where she fell in love. Descendents of her aristocratic family and contemporary writers including PD James act as guides through her life.

In this episode of The Ascent of Money Niall Ferguson investigates the creation of the bond market in Renaissance Italy and its effects on military history as it swept westward across Europe and on to the United States. One of the great pillars of world finance, it also played a significant role in the establishing of rich and powerful dynasties such as the Rothschilds and retains its influence to this day.

Since the 1990s, once risky markets in Asia, Latin America and eastern Europe have become better investments than the UK or US stock market. The explanation is the rise of 'Chimerica' - the economic marriage of China and the United States. But does it make sense for poor Chinese savers to lend to rich American spenders?

With bricks and mortar the favourite form of investment across the English-speaking world, Niall Ferguson examines the role of the property-owning masses in the global economy. He explores how the sub-prime mortgage crisis that began in 2007 heralded the current downturn, when for the first time in years the price of property began to fall and lenders realised their security was a house of cards.

Niall Ferguson describes the history of global finance and charts the epoch-making events of the capitalist system through the centuries, seeking lessons for the present crisis. He begins by examining the origins of banking with the Medici family and the innovative concepts of credit and debt which underpin the world economy and have driven progress for millennia.

Niall Ferguson explores stock market bubbles by tracing the rise and fall of two of the most famous investment companies in history, the Dutch East India and the French Mississippi. Finding parallels between the American crash of the 18th century and the more recent Enron scandal, he uses theories of behavioural finance to explain the human herding instinct when it comes to investment.

What do we know about Google beside the fact it is the name of the world's most famous website? Meet the people in the Googleplex - the inventors, the managers, advisors and users.

The illusion of vision. It feels as though we open our eyes and just see what's out there, but the more we learn about the brain's visual system, the further it seems this is from the truth. Patients who can't see movement or recognize faces, reveal the tricks and short cuts the brain uses to construct an illusion of reality. Is the brain making up so much of what we think we're seeing that vision is really just dreaming with your eyes open?

He explores how American optimism about the infinite possibilities of its land and resources is in danger of coming to a grinding halt. Nowhere is it more evident than in the American West, which has always been a symbol of opportunity and freedom. Oil at four dollars a gallon may dominate the headlines, but here it is the lack of water that is an bigger threat to the American future. The West is in the grip of a years-long drought. America's optimism about its natural resources has always been spiced with clashes over conservation, going back to the first man to navigate the Colorado river, John Wesley Powell. American ingenuity made farming on an industrial scale possible in the early years of the 20th century, but at the cost of making Oklahoma a dust bowl. The Hoover Dam, a modern American miracle which used to provide essential irrigation for farming and for the new city of Las Vegas, is not able to cope with the demand for water any more.

In American War, Simon reveals how different the American attitude to war is from what outsiders assume it to be. Two of the founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, disagreed about whether America should even have a professional army - a division still evident when Simon visits America's premier military academy at West Point. From the Civil War right through to Mark Twain's denunciation of President Teddy Roosevelt's imperial adventure in the Phillipines, American wars have inspired profound debate. And nowhere more so in the 2008 election than San Antonio, Texas, nicknamed Military City because of its high population of veterans and serving soldiers, where Simon finds feelings about the war are deeply divided. As with the great war elections of the past, it's a debate which forces America to dig deep and rediscover what it stands for.

Simon explores the ways in which faith has shaped American political life. His starting point is a remarkable fact about the coming election: for the first time in a generation it is the Democrats who claim to be the party of God. It is Barack Obama, not John McCain, who has been talking about his faith. In Britain we have always thought of American religion as a largely conservative force, yet Simon shows how throughout American history it has played a crucial role in the fight for freedom. Faith helped create America - it was the search for religious freedom that led thousands to make the dangerous journey to the colonies in the 1600s. After independence was won, that religious freedom was enshrined in the constitution; America was the first country in the world to do so. Simon also looks at the remarkable role the black church has played, first in the liberation of the slaves in the 1800s, and again in the civil rights movement of the 1960s; neither would have happened without its religious activists. It is this very church that has been the inspiration for Barack Obama, who traces the roots of his political inspiration to his faith.

Simon looks at the bitter conflict over immigration in American history. Who should be allowed to enter America and call themselves an American has always been one of the nation's most divisive issues, and it continues to be so at this election. He traces the roots of this conflict to the founding of America. The early settlers were themselves immigrants, but they saw America as fundamentally a white and Protestant nation. Simon looks at the key events that challenged this view: the annexation of parts of Mexico in 1848 that made 100,000 non-whites American citizens, the immigration and subsequent expulsion of the Chinese in the late 19th century, and the massive immigration from Eastern Europe during the industrialisation of the 1920s. Each time there have been those who have insisted America must stay white if it's to stay true to itself, and each time they have been defeated by the sheer force of history. John F. Kennedy defined America as a Nation of Immigrants in 1964 and Simon argues that the candidacy of Barack Obama represents the final triumph of the vision of America as a multi-ethnic nation.

The American icon behind the Guggenheim museum, Fallingwater and his own home, Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright became the greatest architect of the 20th century - not only because of his magnificent talent but because he was a master showman and self-publicist. The sheer scale of Lloyd Wright's career - over 450 buildings in 70 years - is astonishing in itself but there is much more to his story than the romantic myth his autobiography revealed. This BBC documentary explores Lloyd Wright's visionary works and reveals how his life was beset with periods of devastating critical derision, financial chaos, scandal, and a violent but little-known murder.