The Compass

China has been described as the greatest threat to the World Trade Organisation, and its biggest champion. The WTO wasn’t designed to handle China, and its entry has had seismic consequences. If China won’t change, can the WTO adapt? Without reform, could China break the WTO?And finally, can the post-war rules and institutions survive in a recognisable form, or are we already witnessing the birth of a very different world? Journalist and former barrister Afua Hirsch talks to a wide range of historians, politicians and thinkers and asks if the world order forged after World War Two is coming apart.

The World Trade Organisation was established in 1995, building on earlier global trade mechanisms. Did this represent a capture of the systems by neoliberals after the Cold War? Now President Trump is waging a trade war on China and sidelining the WTO. Does he have a point – and can the system survive?

Afua Hirsch examines the principle of self-determination, which Franklin Roosevelt insisted on including in the Atlantic Charter. It was a powerful force behind the liberation struggles which peaked in the 1950s and '60s as a wave of decolonisation swept the world and countries such as Tunisia, Jamaica, Nigeria and Guyana achieved independence. But it is not the same as a right to separate and form your own country, as the Catalans have recently been reminded. And it has a forgotten dark side as a justification for population transfer, going back to 1923 when Greece and Turkey agreed to uproot two million people in a forced population exchange.Presenter: Afua Hirsch Producer: Lucy Bailey(Photo: Illustration of a knitted ball resembling Earth unravelling. Credit: Nadia Akingbule)

The UN Charter and Security Council were supposed to prevent aggressive wars. Who has broken the rules, and how much damage has that done? It is often said that the great powers have always done what they wanted and ignored international law. But will new forms of war present even more of a challenge?Presenter: Afua Hirsch Producer: Lucy Bailey(Photo: Illustration of a knitted ball resembling Earth unravelling. Credit: Nadia Akingbule)

In early August 1941 Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met on a US flagship off Newfoundland and drew up The Atlantic Charter. It laid the foundations of an international system that has been in place ever since. But is it now under unbearable strain? Has the international human rights machinery worked? What about the global human rights movement? Many believe we are now at a crisis point, with populism and the rise of China both challenging the project. Others think the human rights movement is itself partly to blame.Journalist and former barrister Afua Hirsch talks to a wide range of international lawyers, historians and thinkers and asks if the world order forged after World War Two is coming apart.Presenter: Afua Hirsch Producer: Lucy Bailey(Photo: Illustration of a knitted ball resembling Earth unravelling. Credit: Nadia Akingbule)

Ten years ago the world financial system had a heart attack. Gripped by panic, banks stopped lending, cash ran out and the world came to the edge of a financial precipice.Professor Ian Goldin questions whether lessons have really been learned from what happened a decade ago and asks whether we are now better prepared to identify and prevent the next one? He talks about the threat that climate change might pose with Lord Nick Stern, asks Peter Piot – the man who discovered Ebola – how problematic a pandemic might be and questions whether financial innovation is really a good thing with Anat Admati, co-author of The Bankers’ New Clothes. Presenter: Ian Goldin Producer: Ben Carter(Photo: Bitcoin. Credit: Omar Marques/Getty Images)

As the world dealt with the fallout of the 2008 financial crash the hunt began for someone to blame. One group of people was suddenly thrust into the spotlight - economists. If they could not see such a catastrophe coming, had the world’s economists been asleep on the job, inept, or just blind to the crucial warning signs? As an economist himself, professor Ian Goldin thinks economists deserve a share of the blame. He looks at the ways the financial crash led to a crisis in his own profession, and to huge changes in the way economics is thought about and taught. Why should we care? Remember these are the people who steer the financial systems on which we all depend. If they give bad advice, it can wreck your economy. Ian argues that economics needs to get away from some of its old ideas about treating human behaviour as a rational, rather macho science, and open itself up to ideas from across the whole world. But in the end, should we all try harder to be economically literate and better able to spot dangers

In 2008 when the financial systems of the world’s richest countries crashed, others did not. Asian nations, especially China, bounced back quickly from the crisis, and were able to capitalise on their financial power to build up their reputation as global players. Professor Ian Goldin looks at how this has led to a shift in power from West to East, the ripples of which can be seen in everything from the founding of the G20, to Chinese foreign investment in Africa, to a rise in confidence in developing countries. With this massive change in world power still underway, should we be worried or excited? Professor Goldin hears from guests including Amnesty International secretary general Kumi Naidoo, head of the IMF Christine Lagarde, professor of public policy at the National University of Singapore Kishore Mahbubani, and former World Bank managing director and finance minister of Nigeria Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

Did Governments’ handling of the 2008 financial crisis – when some chose to implement austerity and some didn’t - make things better or worse? Ian Goldin, professor of Globalisation and Development at Oxford University, visits Illinois in the US to find out how people were affected by the collapse in the housing market. He also talks to Christine Lagarde – the head of the International Monetary Fund – about how austerity measures were implemented in Europe. And Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the former Minister of Finance in Nigeria, talks about how the crisis was felt in Africa. Presenter: Ian Goldin Producer: Ben Carter(Photo: Child with banner, Credit: Getty Images)

In 2008 the world financial system had a heart attack. Gripped by panic, banks stopped lending, cash ran out and the world came to the edge of a financial precipice. As millions of people lost their jobs and as the shock that started in Wall Street reverberated around the world, the crisis led to a collapse of the Greek, Spanish, Icelandic and other economies. Professor Ian Goldin looks at the origins of the crash and he examines how it affected our trust in authorities and experts. He travels to New York to talk to some of the world’s leading academics including Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs and Adam Tooze and he hears from a former Lehman Brothers employee about the final days of the troubled business whose collapse led to the financial crisis. Presenter: Ian Goldin Producer: Ben Carter(Photo: Two employees of Christie's auction house manoeuvre the Lehman Brothers corporate logo in London Credit: Oli Scarff/Getty Images)

Nobody ever forgets the first time that they hear or see a tiger. But as Chris Watson discovers when he travels to Corbett National Park in India this is far from easy. What he uncovers is a fascinating relationship between the people and the forest environment in which listening plays a vital role. Amongst the dense vegetation you can hear far more than you can see. As a wildlife sound recordist from North East England, Chis is immediately excited by the range of new sounds he can hear; a soundscape which changes throughout the day and night. Listening provides vital sound clues as to the activities and whereabouts of the wildlife. Local people learn to recognise and interpret these sounds; for example different species of birds call at different times of the day. And recognising when a tiger is near from the alarm calls of birds in the canopy, could save your life, as could knowing which direction you are travelling by the sounds and direction of the wind. Living with Nature in this way results in extrao

Wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson accompanies Sami Joiker, Andé Sombe, on a journey up a mountain on the Lofoten islands in Norway to explore the relationship between the sounds of the mountain, the people and the wildlife. As Chris discovers, for many Norwegians the soundscape is part of the fascination and attraction of the mountains. The mountains offer an escape from urban and man-made noise to Nature’s symphony which is composed amongst other things of the sounds of running water produced by the glacial streams, the whisper and roar of the wind, the chorus of song birds and the cry of soaring ravens high overhead. Looking around Chris is reminded that this is an Arctic landscape but in recent years the glacial ice has been melting in some of Norway’s highest mountains and we learn how a team of archaeologists have been recovering thousands of artefacts, some of which date back 6,000 years. But it is also the quality of the sounds here that intrigues Chris, and during the climb gradually he begi

Beginning with a few solo notes from a group of birds (including sparrow doves and finches) before the first light of day and ending with the sounds of the wind in the darkness of the night, wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson presents a journey in sound from dawn to dusk in the Namib Desert in southern Africa. The Namib is dominated by two features; the sand and the wind. Both of these are constantly shifting and changing and so too are the sounds they produce. The wind is hugely significant to the local community, the San, for whom it is linked with ideas of the spirit and breath of life and with scents and smells. The wind is a carrier of messages. There are good winds and bad winds. The sounds carried on the wind are an aural guide to life in the landscape. The wind of course carries other sounds with it, and as on the Plains (the first programme in this series), local people use sound to survive here; to identify the whereabouts of predators and prey. What is also fascinating about the desert are

From the moment “you wake up in the morning ...you become aware of sounds, the sounds of Africa“ says Saba Douglas Hamilton, a conservationist who was born and brought up in the Great Rift Valley. In the first of four programmes, wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson guides us on a journey in sound across the Plains to hear the world as you’ve never heard it before and explores the relationship between the soundscape, the people and the wildlife. The great savannah wilderness of the Maasai Mara in Kenya is filled with sound even before the sun rises above the horizon. There are the sounds of the wildlife and the elements; the wind and the rain.Sound is used by animals to communicate with one another, to attract a mate, and warn off predators. Being able to interpret this soundscape is as important to the animals who live here as the people. From a very young age Saba has been aware of the changing soundscape around her. And as we discover, for both Saba and Jackson Looseyia, a local Maasai, being able to

What do we do when antibiotics don’t work? Since the discovery of Penicillin antibiotics have come to underpin all of modern medicine – birth by Cesarean section, hip replacements, organ transplantation, caring for wounds on diabetic patients. None of this would be possible without effective antibiotics. But the medicines we depend are under threat. Decades of overuse has allowed the bacteria that makes us ill to evolve to resist treatment - and this resistance is spreading. In the very near future we may find ourselves living in a world where a simple scratch could have devastating consequences. Aleks Krotoski and Ben Hammersley visit a hospital to learn which disease control protocols we should be using in our daily lives and uncover why the food we eat, and even the air we breathe may contain resistant bacteria, seek out alternative treatments we could use, and find out how the next generation of scientists can use new techniques to search the natural world for the next wave of antibiotics.(Photo: Neut

We all only get one body, and that has to see us through our entire lives. The idea of failing health is a very visceral fear for the majority of people in the world. It is inevitable, is it not? But with advances in medicine and technology the future might not involve simply growing old gracefully. We might upgrade in order to level up our natural abilities, extend our lives or consign pain and infirmity to history. Aleks Krotoski and Ben Hammersley find out how to future proof our actual selves, clambering into exoskeletons that could give us all inhuman strength, investigating how far we could hack our own biology, and discover if we will upgrade purely because we want to enjoy our lives to the fullest, or whether it will be necessary to keep up with the demands of future society.(Photo: Ted Kilroy uses eLegs - artificially intelligent, bionic exoskeletons that give wheelchair users the freedom to stand and take independent steps. Credit: Getty Images)

Big Data has been called the new crude oil, a seemingly inexhaustible resource that can use this data to make our lives better. Data can be used to create smart cities that make life easier for all of us, or to spur on new discoveries in medical science and even stop the next pandemic in its tracks. If used correctly it will be a boom for humanity.But behind Big Data are millions of individual people - including you and me. From the most innocuous picture on Instagram, to how many steps you rack up in a day, to the most intimate conversations you have with loved ones online. Everything about you has been converted into data, which is now stored, used, and sold on without you every knowing to what end… or how it might impact on your life.Aleks Krotoski and Ben Hammersley investigate how you can future proof your own digital shadow, discover just how much information about you is amassed day to day, how it can be used by authoritarian states to control its citizens and how to win the arms race against tech comp

What humans do to earn a living has always evolved to suit the needs of society, and the capabilities of the technology at our disposal. But thanks to the rapid development of artificial intelligence and automation we are on the cusp of a whole new Industrial Revolution. Manual and low skilled labour are already feeling the impact of automation – Amazon is experimenting with delivery drones, the fast food industry may soon be staffed with burger-flipping bots, and driverless vehicles are already taking to the road. But those with high skill jobs should not rest on their laurels – legal services, medical care, and academia are all set to change as computers take over all the data crunching. People are either going to have to find new things to do, or risk being left behind as the world of work changes. Aleks Krotoski and Ben Hammersley find out how we can all continue to be gainfully employed for years to come. They investigate which jobs will remain in high demand, how developi

Aleks Krotoski and Ben Hammersley discover how to prepare for the social, economic and technological changes that are coming in the next few decades so we can all thrive in the future.In the past the only places you were likely to see robots was on the big screen or on the factory floor, but now they are entering the home. In fact you may already have an Alexa to play a favourite tune or settle a debate with a quick Google search. If you are lucky there is a Roomba programmed to clean the floor. Perhaps your child already has a toy that can talk back to them?But are we really prepared for a world full of such machines? These will not be mindless automatons - we are talking about robots that will be part of the fabric of our homes, robots designed to interact with us like social beings, robots that will be constantly monitoring their owners and learning everything about us. Aleks and Ben learn how you can use robots as an extension of your own body, and how they can also influence how we feel and behave witho

The series ends with Robin Lustig asking if you can have too much English. From India he hears how English can divide people as powerfully as it brings them together. In the US he meets speakers of Native American languages who want to keep their linguistic traditions alive. And in East Africa Robin asks whether a requirement to speak good English prevents millions from accessing the best jobs and universities.Some see English as a 'killer language' which threatens the existence of less widely-spoken languages. But not everyone sees English as a linguistic thug. To a Shanghai entrepreneur, it is the glue in the global economy, for others a ladder of opportunity, while some claim English may soon be in retreat.In an age of linguistic giants including Spanish, Mandarin and Arabic, Robin concludes by looking to the future to ask whether English will continue to dominate or decline, diminish lives and cultures or enrich them. Producer: Mohini Patel(Photo: Navajo family attend the Denver March Powwow 2017. Credit: