The City of Angels: According to Levine, LA is the slowest city in the country. But those of us who live here know that's only part of the story. The image is we're all about sunglasses, fancy cars, the Hotel California. But a lot of people here who live a mellow lifestyle chose to operate at a rather fast place. Bob Levine helps reorient us to the lifestyle of the West.

The Ultimate Price: In Global Soul, Pico Iyer talks about our ability to travel around the world in the blink of an eye. What do we lose? A sense of place and a sense of self. As he eloquently puts it, "everywhere is so made up of everywhere else."

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: For many companies, the ability to stay ahead of trends is key to the economic bottom line. But how do they keep up with popular likes and dislikes and consumer needs? Reporter Sarah Gardner will follow a trend-spotter as they work and find out what's at stake when it comes to the next big thing.

How Did We Get Here?: Time flies, but it hasn't always. John Rennie, Editor in Chief of Scientific American speaks about how humans are moving at faster speeds than ever imagined. NASA's scramjet will travel faster than 5,000 miles an hour. But this is not why, he argues, we're stressed out by speed. What causes us stress is how fast we demand that our environment moves around us, from fashion images, to business transactions, to social trends. It causes us great anxiety. He muses that it's because we humans are fickle, and have become afraid of the quiet.

Winding Down in the West: The San Francisco Bay Area clocks in at number 24 when it comes to pace of life. Bob Levine explains why.

Where Speed and Money Collide: On Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center sits across the street from two dozen venture capital firms. Fast-moving particles and fast-moving money. With Adam Lashinsky from TheStreet.com as our guide, we'll examine how long it takes a company to go from its first hit of venture capital to IPO in today's business model. And, how quickly are things changing in the center of the country's tech action?

Spreading the Panic: Political scientist Tad Homer Dixon argues that speed means we can make small problems BIG more quickly. Both the 1987 stock market crash and the Asian financial crisis of 1997/98 spread far and fast, he says, thanks to the technology that allows us to conduct financial transactions. Plus, though our technology moves fast and furiously, we are unable to keep up, creating a so-called "ingenuity gap." We'll talk with Dixon about the price we're paying for all this speed.

What Speed Means to Me - The Profession of Speed: Dave Floyd is a day trader. Though he's made a lot of money in a matter of seconds, he argues there are no "get rich quick" schemes. Being a good day trader is like anything else - it takes years to perfect and lots of experience, hard work, and perserverence to succeed over the long haul.

Databurst: Mitchell Hartman looks at the changing speed of financial transactions.

Indianapolis - Life in the Middle: Indianapolis, home to some of the fastest racing in the world, falls smack dab in the middle when it comes to the pace of life in America. We'll rejoin with Bob Levine to find out more about speed in Indianapolis.

Speed For Speed's Sake: People have always used their cars to differentiate themselves from each other, since the time of the Model T. My car is better than yours, and speed is a component of that. Nowadays, one way to differentiate yourself is by how efficient your car is; this has become a status symbol in and of itself. And thanks to new technology, green and speed are no longer mutually exclusive. The new focus for the car companies will be on beefing up the electric motors, and using hydrogen rods to power hot rods. There's a lot at stake economically: GM used the introduction of high performance vehicles to overtake Ford and Chrysler in the '60s, the idea of more power than you. Jamie Kitman, writer for Automotive Magazine, takes a spin.

Where's the Beef?: Foot and mouth disease has spread quickly through England, and is now moving on to the rest of Europe. The rapid spread of this and other diseases is a great case study about eliminating trade barriers—there are no borders in Europe to slow down the movement of goods, and this is one result. It happened to people, too, when some Native American tribes went extinct after getting smallpox blankets from European traders. Christy George reports.

What Speed Means to Me: James Gleick, author of Faster—the Acceleration of Just About Everything, talks about how much we obsess about time simply because we can. But behind all the worry about time lurks the fear of mortality, so we're driven to try to control time, but it's something we don't own.

Databurst: Marketplace takes a look at the pace of world trade.

The History of Time (Real Audio): How did our frenzied pace of life originate? According to social psychologist Bob Levine, it all started when we began marking time in an accurate fashion. From the Industrial Revolution to the present, a look at the connection between speed and economic well-being.

The Experiments: David Brancaccio and our guide for the week, Professor Bob Levine, introduce us to SPEED.

Why Boston?: Why are we in Boston? What we can learn about the Northeast as a region from the pace of life research? Bob Levine explains.

Living on Speed: Speed is the bottom line in a bicycle messenger's career, as Michelle Brier learns.

What Speed Means to Me - The Profession of Speed: A commentary by Johnnie Walker. To him, speed meant choking down 30 speed pills a day so he could work two jobs and make ends meet. Now, he has a new speed addiction that might be much harder to kick: cell phones and palms.

Databurst: Mitchell Hartman tells us how the speed of communication has changed over the years.

Back to Speed...