The Compass

4/4 The shores of the Pacific are irresistible to tourists. From the coral wonders of Australia’s Gold Coast to the loneliest South Pacific atoll, local people make their living from the beauty of their surroundings. In the final edition of our series on the world’s oceans we explore how native traditions and the booming business of tourism co-exist. Many Solomon Islanders would like to see more tourists but worry about the loss of native culture. We meet local people anxious to hang on to traditions like shark-calling and shell money. Will more tourists help or hinder their cause? Diving on the Great Barrier Reef we hear how tour operators who once denied the coral was in decline now invest money in research to find a ‘super coral’ that can survive warming waters and the pressures of development. The Philippines is increasingly dependent on tourism and plenty of locals are attracted by the jobs that come with the construction of large scale resorts. Can they be built without destroying the delicate mari

3/4 As the ice of the Arctic and Southern Oceans melts, its composition changes completely. Ships can now sail through the Arctic from China to Europe; seals, walrus and polar bears have to move further north and find different prey. In the third edition of our series on the world’s oceans we visit Svalbard and Alaska to discover what change means for the people of the Arctic as the warming climate brings more trade, more tourists and new species. In the Norwegian territory of Svalbard residents find the doors and windows of their homes warping as the permafrost melts. In Alaska the traditional Inuit freezer cabinets - essentially deep holes cut into the ice - no longer keep whale meat fresh through the summer. The Southern Ocean, wrapped around a vast frozen continent, faces the same warming trends but here the witnesses are penguins and the scientists who monitor them, fishermen and the toothfish and krill that are increasingly easy to catch for a hungry world. Beneath the waves, oceanographer Jon

2/4 Only now is deep sea exploration beginning in remote parts of the Indian Ocean to reveal what lies on the ocean floor, what treasures can be found that could be used for scientific and technological development. Underwater mining for minerals is being carried out by several nations and there’s a huge rush around the ocean rim to promote what’s called the Blue Economy, profiting from the ocean and its riches. We travel around the Indian Ocean from South Africa to Mauritius and North West Australia via the Indonesian island on the edge of the Indian and Pacific oceans to meet people who are developing enterprising ways of profiting from the ocean, whilst being careful not to further damage the fragile Eco systems that have been depleted over decades through over-fishing and climate change. A fascinating underwater commentary is provided by oceanographer, Jon Copley from Southampton University, explaining the geology and currents that link the shores of the Indian Ocean.Photo: Coral reef in the Indian Oce

1/4 In this first episode we cross the ocean from the Grand Banks to the tip of South Africa via Reykjavik in Iceland meeting those involved in fishing and working along the shores of the Atlantic.Beneath the waves, oceanographer Jon Copley from Southampton University provides a fascinating underwater commentary, demonstrating how currents and ocean ridges link the lives on every shore of the Atlantic.The Atlantic Ocean covers more than 100 million square kilometres, stretching from southern Africa to Iceland and from the Americas to Europe. Named after the Greek God Atlantikos and for the area of water near to the Atlas Mountains, it has shaped human history and culture in more ways than any other ocean as a trade route, a slave passage and as a vital source of food. For centuries it has been a source of wealth and prosperity for those who voyaged across it in search of food, from the Basque sailors who ventured to North America in search of cod and whale meat, to the Vikings who traversed it long before Eur

4/4 American democracy can easily frustrate change. The country’s Constitution is almost impossible to amend. The many interest groups swirling through Congress often paralyse or colonise it; and corralling 50 states is often beyond the capacity of the most able president. Yet America has been home to a string of popular movements across the last two centuries that have brought vigour and change to what otherwise might have been a sclerotic political system. It mattered, of course, that the country was born in revolution, meaning that popular resistance, beginning with the original Tea Party in Boston Harbour, is part of the nation’s DNA. We encounter the passion of America’s insurgents and the turbulence their movements generated. We begin with the struggle by African-Americans to end slavery. We continue with the titanic battles between labour and capital in the 1930s over the rights of workers and the obligations of government to regulate the economy in the public interest. And we conclude with an explorat

3/4 One of the most fascinating, and least understood, features of American democracy is that individual states possessed a scope of power much greater than what was given to the central government in Washington. On so many issues, the states went their own way. Whether to teach religion in schools; legalise or outlaw slavery; allow divorce or the sale of alcohol or the sale of firecrackers; permit birth control, pornography, or gambling - on all these matters, and many others, it was up to the individual states to decide. This episode examines the enormous powers possessed by these little leviathans and the diverse ways in which they used them. We visit Dayton, Tennessee, the site of the famous 1924 Scopes Trial, which put before a judge the question of whether the state of Tennessee had the right to ban the teaching of Charles Darwin and evolution from the schools (it did). We talk to experts on the history of marriage in America to understand why some states banned interracial unions while others didn’t se

2/4 The usual way to tell the story of money and democracy in America is in terms of a fall from grace. Once upon a time, democracy was pure, with little corruption, and rich Americans had no influence upon policymakers. The truth is more complicated. By the mid-19th Century, America had the largest, densest, and most labour-intensive democracy in the world. None of this had been anticipated by the country’s founders, who had made no provision in the Constitution for funding an electoral system that, because of its vastness, had become enormously expensive. When government failed, private entrepreneurs rushed in, inventing a new institution - the political party - to organise America’s intricate system of elections. These entrepreneurs took money wherever they found it - from wealthy individuals who wanted to become judges; from corporations who wanted to influence policy; from those who were expected to pay an “assessment” for the privilege of working for the party or in government. Tammany Hall in New York

1/4 America has the world’s oldest continuously operating democracy. Its political institutions have long been a model for democrats everywhere. Yet, American democracy is also troubled. In this four-part series, American historian Gary Gerstle takes a penetrating look at his nation’s democracy and the reasons behind the crisis that besets it today. In this episode, he goes back to the framing of the US Constitution. This gave only limited powers to the federal government, but by the mid-19th Century, Americans wanted it to do more. Because the Constitution was virtually impossible to change, those who wanted to enlarge the government had to use “secret weapons.” One of these was the Post Office, which as well as delivering mail, was called on to do things like enforce a ban on porn. Another was a Constitutional clause that allowed the government to regulate inter-state commerce. An Ohio farmer, Roscoe Filburn, challenged this in a key 1942 Supreme Court case, and lost. Since then, the government has relied o

4/4 Angela Saini is on a farm in a rural corner of Karnataka in south India, meeting the team behind Akshayakalpa – a kind of Farm in a Box. When you are on a low income, how can you possibly find a way to raise the funds you need to get into farming, or simply keep your existing farm afloat? Angela meets an entrepreneur who thinks she has found the answer. Angela heads back to Nairobi to catch up with the founder of OkHi – the app that lets you find any address in the city, which we discussed earlier in the series. How are they getting on? Finally, she meets budding agricultural entrepreneurs in Nairobi and talk to the Agriculture Minister Willy Bett.(Photo: Cows in a field, Nyandarua County, Kenya)

3/4 OkHi is a new navigation device which runs on your mobile phone and allows you to find an address, however remote, with GPS coordinates and a photo. It should be accurate to within ten metres and copes without the usual massive infrastructure changes required by sat nav systems. Just outside Bengaluru in India, we take a look at the problems of getting access to banking services in remote communities and the solution being offered by a new company called Sub-K, and their human ATMs.Finally, Angela calls in again on the creators of BRCK internet to learn about their major ambitions for the future.Image: Wes Chege, founder of OkHi, Credit: Whistledown

2/4 A Kenyan company is planning to bring reliable stable internet and rugged tablets to remote schools with the help of BRCK, a solution to internet problems in the shape of a brick. Part two of four. In the northern Indian state of Assam, people have the lowest access to good quality eye care in the whole of India – 18% of all cataracts happen in this one state. ERC Eyecare has a business solution aimed at changing all that. We also return to visit the stethoscope creators from last week’s episode. Things have moved on for the company Taal and it is now trying to drum up business – how are sales going?(Photo: Boy looks up from a Kio Kit tablet used in a school in Kenya)

1/4 Exploring the reality of being an entrepreneur serving the “bottom billion” – a new mini-series from The Compass. In India around a fifth of people still live below the poverty line, according to the most recent World Bank estimates. Businesses selling to this market need to keep prices low. In the famous tech city of Bengaluru, south India, we visit a veterinary clinic for pets, the unlikely home of a surprising young start-up, which is set to revolutionise one of the most common medical devices on the planet - the stethoscope. In a village in Mathura, about three hours' drive from New Delhi we take a look at the installation of a new affordable solution to providing solar energy. We then head to Kenya to meet a young entrepreneur who is looking at the success of firms like Amazon and has developed his own similar internet based delivery system for Kenya’s low-income customers. (Photo: Taal component board)

The scientist running the Square Kilometre Array, the world's biggest telescope. Episode five of five. The telescope's antennae spiral across the African continent. In the remote North Karoo town of Carnarvon in South Africa, the next generation of astronomers is training to run this major telescope facility.(Photo: South Africa’s Karoo-based KAT-7 radio telescope array are pictured at sunset at The Square Kilometre Array. Credit: Alexander Joe/AFP)

Science writer and author Dava Sobell travels to Hawaii to ascend mount Mauna Kea. Among the observatories on the summit is the proposed Thirty Metre Telescope. Episode four of five. Dava discovers the plans are creating a rift between astronomers and local Hawaiians. TMT will be able to discern gases in the most remote atmospheres, which may indicate extra terrestrial life but the site is sacred for the native Hawaiian community. The story echoes the tension between science and faith that has played out for centuries.(Photo: Astrophotography of The Great Orion Nebula, in the constellation Orion. Credit: Getty Images)

Dava Sobel travels to Edinburgh, to catch sight of the most ambitious telescope being made. Episode three of five. This time next year, the James Webb Space Telescope will begin its long journey to a stable orbit at a place called L-2, one million miles beyond the Moon. It will unfold the components of its huge, intricate body and look back in time, to probe events that occurred nearly 14 billion years ago. The James Webb is a Nasa-led project, with the telescope named after the Nasa administrator who ran the space agency during the Apollo program of the 1960s. This is also a landmark collaboration between the European and Canadian Space Agencies, in all elements of its design and construction. Dava learns about the intricacies of the British component being made, the MIRI – the Mid Infrared Instrument – which will intercept invisible light waves in the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum, to study the earliest stars and galaxies and ultimately discover how our universe came to be.(Photo: A full s

Dava Sobel hears from telescope operators at ALMA, the remote observatory high in the Atacama Desert in Chile, talking to us with their oxygen tanks at the ready. Episode two of five. As we hear, the ‘radio sky’ presents an alternate universe, in which the Moon and planets are barely detectable. In their place are clouds of interstellar gas and other exotic celestial sources which reveal different aspects of our history and astronomy. At ALMA, the radio astronomers do not need to wait until dark to make their observations but can work at any hour, day or night.(Photo: The ALMA Observatory is located in the Chajnantor Plateau over 5,000 metres above sea level. Credit: ALMA/ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

Dava Sobel uncovers the brilliance of her hero, the 16th century Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who revealed the true model of the universe by putting the Sun, rather than the Earth, at its hub. Episode one of five. In the Cathedral town of Frombork on the Baltic Sea in Northern Poland, we hear how he served his entire career in the church and how he kept his astronomical findings a secret, fearful of being denounced by the Catholic Church. On his deathbed, he published his life’s work, "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres". (Photo: Monument of great astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, Torun, Poland. Credit: Getty Images)

The Crimean coast is so important that Russia seized it from Ukraine. But what have been the costs of gaining this valuable prize? The final leg of our five-episode journey across and around the Black Sea takes us to the port of Sevastopol. And we also reveal details about the next mini-series from The Compass.Producer Monica Whitlock. Photo: The embankment of Sevastopol, Crimea, Ukraine Credit: Getty Images

Ghost states like Abkhazia have the trappings of independence, but are unrecognised by most of the world. On the far north-east shore of the Black Sea, the region is determined to preserve its independence and ancient culture, including a pagan religion based around animal sacrifices, but the price of statehood is deep isolation. Presenter Tim Whewell discovers what life is like in Abkhazia. He begins his journey at the Abkhaz border and continues by horse-drawn wagon - the only available transport. Produced by Monica Whitlock. This is the fourth part of five. (Photo: Abkhaz veterans of the World War II, Credit: Monica Whitlock)

Black Sea truckers are a tough bunch. Driving thousands of miles through Europe, the Caucasus and eastwards to China, they transport everything from biscuits to fridges to pigs. Tim Whewell joins them on board the huge Black Sea ferry that connects these places, sailing from Odessa to Batumi in Georgia. The truckers are mainly from the former Soviet Union, many have known each other for years, and once all belonged to one country. The truckers are endlessly inventive as they navigate the fraught geopolitics that shape their lives. The war in Syria, the annexation of Crimea, European visa rules, are just some of the obstacles they overcome. As the they relax for the thousand-kilometre crossing, they make merry, and tell stories of the road.Producer: Monica WhitlockTruckers set off by ferry from Istanbul to Odessa. Credit: Monica Whitlock