Inside America

After three US presidential debates which have attracted some of the biggest viewing audiences in modern American political memory, what have we learned from these televised clashes? In one of the most bitter and polarised presidential campaigns, how much have Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton actually revealed about themselves, their policies and what they could bring to the White House?

San Antonio is now a majority Hispanic city, and home to many entrepreneurial success stories. Joe Miller asks why Hispanic representation in big business has lagged.

The final programme in the series brings together five of the speakers from the road trip

In what is described as the fitting coda to his administration, President Obama cut the ribbon of the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture on 24 September. Journalists Jesse J Holland and Robin N Hamilton are onsite in Washington DC for BBC World Service to hear from the architects, curators, donors, and expectant visitors who have travelled hundreds of miles to celebrate its grand opening.

Taking the last spot on America’s National Mall, the museum – a beautiful three-tiered structure sheathed in bronze metalwork - opens after what’s described as the hardest curatorial job in history. It has been more than ten years in the making. It’s a museum that will explain, celebrate and confront the African American experience. At a time of racial tension, its mission to heal is seen as vital too. Museum director Lonnie Bunch, congressman John Lewis and judge Robert Wilkins describe the challenges of creating a museum which aims to tell the story of America through the lens of the African American experience. A story which is bound to provoke distress and anger as well as joy and admiration - something the museum’s 250 volunteers are being specially trained to deal with.

We hear from two founding donors, Samuel L Jackson and General Colin Powell about the importance of having a national museum dedicated to African American history and culture. From locations across the USA - Philadelphia, Detroit, Houston, St Louis, Nashville - we uncover stories behind the museum’s varied new acquisitions, largely told by the donors themselves: from Harriet Tubman’s Hymn book to Lauren Anderson’s ballet shoes, protest banners from Ferguson, the late music producer J Dilla’s synthesizer, and a former slave’s printing press. And we follow inspirational young divers in South Florida working in partnership with the museum to locate long-lost slave wrecks.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are seen as the most unpopular candidates to have ever stood for the presidency of the United States. So why is it so difficult for a third party candidate to break through and make a real impact? Owen Bennett Jones and his guests discuss whether the US political system, trumpeted as a shining beacon of democracy across the world, really does give the voter the best choice.

Photo: A Trump supporter at the first US presidential debate in September 2016. Credit: Getty Images

Michelle Fleury and Ben Crighton travel from Louisville in Kentucky to New York on the East Coast. Along the way they speak to miners, environmentalists, food bank volunteers, drug addicts and former school students about President Obama’s legacy. Although the economy seems to have recovered from the global financial crisis, they encounter anger and disillusionment, and find that much of the optimism that swept Obama into office in 2008 has been replaced by division in Washington and across the country.

In the weeks before the 2008 US election, the BBC drove a bus coast to coast across the US asking people about their lives and their hopes and fears for the future. In the four-part series America Revisited we meet some of those same people again to find out why the country seems more divided than ever.

Philippa Thomas and Charlotte Pritchard travel from Los Angeles and the glitz and glamour of Vegas to the edge of the country on the US-Mexican border in Texas. They talk to musicians, gun enthusiasts and cowboys about whether President Obama has delivered all he promised. As well as enthusiasm for the new healthcare reforms and the recovering housing market, they uncover the deep tensions and worries permeating this election year.

In the weeks before the 2008 US election, the BBC drove a bus coast to coast across the US asking people about their lives and their hopes and fears for the future. In the four-part series America Revisited we meet some of those same people again to find out why the country seems more divided than ever.

When President Obama stepped into the White House back in 2008, many hoped his mixed heritage would help unite the country, but eight years on America has never appeared more polarised. From Dallas to Nashville Chloe Hadjimatheou retraces a journey she took before Obama’s election across the southern states and stumbles across a gay community under attack, unfettered poverty in trailer parks, the last abortion clinic in Missouri, and meets convicted murderers, to find out why liberal and conservative, black and white, religious and secular Americans harbour so much animosity towards one another.

In the weeks before the 2008 US election, the BBC drove a bus coast to coast across the US asking people about their lives and their hopes and fears for the future. In the four-part series, America Revisited, we meet some of those same people again to find out why the country seems more divided than ever.