Six Routes travels to Brazil, where Marketplace’s Lizzie O’Leary encounters the world’s seventh largest economy teetering on the edge of recession. Home of the 2016 Summer Olympics, this mighty BRIC economy - which five years ago boasted a growth rate of more than seven percent - has cooled, possibly at the expense of the country's growing middle class.
Along the way Lizzie meets Joao Cavalcanti, who made his money in iron ore and takes a ride in his bullet-proof car. Later, she meets a company who took their money out of commodities and put it into the Brazilian beauty product industry.
Plus we hear the first hand account of a family who experienced Brazil’s famous social mobility - 50 million people have joined the middle class between 2003 and 2014 - over three generations.