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(Los Angeles) - For five days in December, Marketplace, the nation's most popular daily business news program with four million weekly listeners, will take an unconventional "tour of the world" - via small towns with big names in America's heartland.

By examining how the local economies of Missouri towns like Cuba (population 2,600) rely on international trade, host David Brancaccio and Marketplace correspondents explore the idea that "all globalism is local."

The shows will air December 4-8 on public radio stations nationwide (check local listings for exact times), and will be broadcast live, on location - that is, from Voss' truck stop in Cuba, Mo., that plays host to thousands of truckers who crisscross the country every day.

On the road, Brancaccio will explore how it happened that dots on the map of Middle America have become significant threads in the world's economic fabric. In this offbeat approach to globalism, small-town residents, not CEOs of major corporations, will describe how they are affected by the arrival of international trade partners.

The owner of a Missouri company will tell how his oak barrels once stored Kentucky bourbon, but now hold Scotch in Scotland, and wine in South Africa and France. Listeners will hear from the only U. S. manufacturer of aerosol products approved by the E. U. to be sold in Europe - because they use nitrogen, not propane - and how a group of farmers from Cuba (the country) recently visited Cuba (the town) with the hope of ending U. S. economic sanctions.

But Marketplace finds that the new prosperity has spawned a new set of homegrown problems. Many of the boomtowns were unprepared for the growth in employment opportunities, and now suffer severe housing shortages. International connections and rapid development are jeopardizing small-town lifestyles. And despite proliferating career possibilities, there are no guarantees that local students will stay or return upon completing their education.

"Broadcasting from a truck stop in Cuba is just the sort of thing that regular Marketplace listeners have learned to expect from us," says Brancaccio, "keeping Main Street, not Wall Street, at the front and center of our coverage. We were very lucky to find a community at the statistical center of the country that so well illustrates the golden opportunities and severe costs of globalism."

Marketplace is produced in Los Angeles by Minnesota Public Radio's Marketplace Productions, in association with the University of Southern California, and is distributed worldwide by PRI, Public Radio International. Marketplace is broadcast by more than 290 public radio stations, and is heard around the world via American Forces Radio and Television Service. PRI also makes the program available via World Radio Network (RN), a direct broadcast satellite channel serving Europe, Asia and Africa.

Marketplace is made possible by GE "and its nearly 300,000 employees worldwide who believe that understanding the global economy is everyone's business"; and by Fannie Mae, "the company that helps put the dream of home ownership within reach for millions of American families." Additional funding comes from Korn/Ferry International, The Economist Newspapers, Reuters, Westlaw, Dow Jones Interactive and public radio stations nationwide. The Marketplace Japan coverage is made possible by grants from the U. S. Japan Foundation, the Center for Global Partnership, the Freeman Foundation and the Keizai Koho - the Japan center for Social Research. This Marketplace On the Road project is made possible by a grant from Yahoo! - providing daily news online at news.yahoo.com.