Former Vice President Al Gore tells Leonard Lopate what will drive global change in the decades to come.

Director Micha X. Peled, discusses his documentary “Bitter Seeds,” about an epidemic of farmer suicides in India. In 2004 an American company introduced its genetically modified seeds to the Indian market, promising higher yields. But the seeds require expensive pesticides and chemical fertilizers and are sterile, so new seeds have to be every year, which is costly for farmers with already meager incomes. “Bitter Seeds” is being shown as part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater.

The Northwest has long been a major source of exports. Timber and paper once dominated the Northwest market; these days, it's all about coal. Demand for coal has dropped in the United States, but the clamor for coal in Asia's growing markets has American companies lobbying for controversial coal terminals along the train tracks in Washington and Oregon to transport coal mined in Montana. Explaining this coal controversy is Ashley Ahearn, an environmental reporter for KUOW in Seattle, and a contributor to their "Coal in the Northwest" series.

New York is the most competitive city in the world, according to a new index published by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

President of the SUNY Levin Institute Garrick Utley examines the impact of globalization on New York and New York City.

Ever wonder what it's like to work at a call center in Delhi? Hear Siddhartha Deb, creative writing teacher at the New School and journalist, who went undercover at just such a place, discuss his study of post-globalization India in the book, The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India.

EVENT: Siddhartha Deb will be at the Barnes & Nobles in Tribeca on Warren Street at 6 p.m. tonight.

Tonight, President Obama will unveil his plan for creating more jobs in America. Obama returned from summer vacation to the dismal news that the country gained no new jobs in August. Unemployment continues to hover around nine percent and it is likely to stay that way through 2012. While the U.S. faces a slow economic decline, countries like China and India are on the rise. "It makes no sense for China to have better rail systems than us, and Singapore having better airports than us," the president noted in his speech following the 2010 midterm elections. "And we just learned that China now has the fastest supercomputer on Earth — that used to be us."

Long before Facebook friends, RSS feeds and online shopping became part of everyday lingo, the Canadian media guru Marshall McLuhan studied the development of mass communication and the effects it would have on America's social landscape.

In the 2009 movie "Up in the Air" Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney, tells viewers that "all the things you probably hate about traveling are warm reminders that I am home." Bingham and his colleagues built their lives around air travel. "Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next," argues that the cities of the future must do the same.

Joseph Nye, University Distinguished Service Professor and former dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and the author of The Future of Power, explains why he believes that technology and information flows shape today's balance of global power.

Anand Giridharadas discusses what it was like to return to the land of his ancestors amid an unlikely economic boom. In India Calling: An intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking, Giridharadas profiles the entrepreneurs, radicals, industrialists, and Indian families who are responding to this economic upheaval.

High food prices have lead to violent riots in Mozambique, where seven people have been killed. Food and water costs have also risen. And food security is a world-wide problem, with wheat and meat prices rising globally. BBC business reporter, Tim Jenkins, says he's noticed this trend for a few years and explains a new U.N. Food and Agriculture survey, which shows that beef prices, poultry prices, and lamb prices have all reached new hights.

It might seem that globalization is a continuing and ominous threat to America's workforce. New York Times business correspondent Micheline Maynard, however, says foreign companies can help American communities — especially as they hire Americans in tough economic times. Maynard is the author of a new book "The Selling of the American Economy.” We're also joined by Amy Lindsay, a former Estée Lauder employee, now a factory worker for Toyota in Indiana. She tells us about her own experience switching from an American employer to a foreign one. Our own Todd Zwillich gives us an insider's view on the recent congressional decision to extend unemployment benefits again.