Episode one: explains how, for the last half of the 20th century, the world moved toward more governmental control of markets -- from the centrally planned economies of the communist world to the "mixed economies" of Europe and the developing world to the United States' regulated capitalism -- and then began to move away from governmental control in the 1980s and 1990s. Discuss two important economists of this era: John Maynard Keynes, who advocated government intervention to control the booms and busts of capitalist economies, and Friedrich von Hayek, who argued that government intervention in the economy would erode human freedom and was doomed to failure.

Episode two: illustrates how economies with strict governmental control encountered serious trouble in the 1980s and how many leaders embraced the idea of "shock therapy," a rapid conversion to free-market capitalism. The program focuses in detail on how reform played out in several countries: Russia, Poland, India, Bolivia, and Chile, as they lived through the upheavals of rapid change, dealing with both the new freedoms and the new dangers of privatization, deregulation, and competition.

Episode three: examines the promises and perils of globalization in the 1990s, focusing on the story of President Clinton's embrace of free-trade policies, the challenges the world's leaders faced in taming the virulent contagion of financial collapse in the developing world, and the strong opposition to globalization that surfaced in protests against the policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Covers the years from the 1992 U.S. presidential election to the September 11 terrorist attacks.