In our new Speed episode, we learn just how outdated our idea of the stock market is. Producer Andy Mills helps us picture the modern-day market with some beautiful depictions of high frequency trading, from technicolor graphs to frantic piano riffs.

Picture the scrum of the stock exchange -- the flurry of buying and selling, the split-second decisions that make and break fortunes. Then take out all the humans and accelerate everything until you literally can't keep up. Jad visits the inhumanly fast world of modern-day, high-speed trading with NPR's

What would be the economic impact of putting some 11 million people on the pathway to citizenship? And how does one person who has lived his life on the black market come out of the shadows financially? Carlo Alban starred on Sesame Street for five years, but he did so as an undocumented immigrant.

Big-money politics and Thanksgiving have a lot more in common than the presidential turkey pardoning. Todd Zwillich, Takeaway Washington correspondent, explains.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan, independent research group that tracks money in campaigns and elections, Obama and Romney's spending, in conjunction with the nearly $1 billion spent by super PACs, will likely add up to $3 billion by the time the polls close today. What have the American people gained from the seventeen month, $3 billion campaign? Stephen Dubner, author and host of "Freakonomics," explains. 

Beginning today, New Zealand will have legal tender featuring Hobbit words and images. And it's not funny money, but real money that can be used to buy and sell goods, with pictures of Hobbits and words in both English and Dwarvish. Ed Reiter, the senior editor at COINage Magazine, explains.

For those of us lucky enough to be employed and making money, there seems to be no good place for us for us to invest that money. Is the solution to put it back in our wallet?

Yesterday, hundreds of demonstrators flooded the streets of Tehran, chanting anti-government slogans and setting garbage cans on fire. The cause of the protests: money.

Financial planner Carl Richards talks about why people make the same financial mistakes over and over. In The Behavior Gap: Simple Ways to Stop Doing Dumb Things with Money, he aims to help people to review those mistakes, identify their personal behavior gaps, and avoid them in the future. He’ll also talk about why he thinks most of us have too much stuff, why it’s bad, and what we can do about it.

Kevin Delaney, Vice Dean for Faculty at the College of Liberal Arts and sociology professor at Temple University, asks how working with money affects people's attitudes towards it in his book, Money at Work: On the Job with Priests, Poker Players and Hedge Fund Traders.

Lisa Miller, contributing editor at New York magazine, discusses whether having more money makes people less kind. Her article "The Money-Empathy Gap" appeared in the July 1 issue of New York magazine.

Generations of parents have taught their kids these golden rules: Wear a seatbelt, don’t smoke, eat your vegetables. But we often forget vital financial lessons: Save money, avoid credit card debt, invest for the future. With high schoolers scoring an average of 69 percent (D+) on the Treasury Department’s 2012 National Financial Capability Challenge survey, it’s clear that families need help starting these critical conversations.

Mother Jones staff reporter Andy Kroll examines the four-decade fight over campaign fundraising and spending in American politics. His article, "Follow the Dark Money, " is in the July/August issue of Mother Jones.

Lawyer Kenneth Feinberg discusses the practical and philosophical problems of using money as a way to address wrongs and reflect individual worth. In Who Gets What: Fair Compensation after Tragedy and Financial Upheaval, he draws on his experiences with some of the most complex legal disputes of the past three decades, including Agent Orange, the closing of the Shoreham Nuclear Plant, and 9/11.

Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky argue that economics is a moral science, and they trace the concept of the good life from Aristotle to the present day. In their book How Much Is Enough? Money and the Good Life, they investigate what the good life really means, what the true value of money is, and why we concentrate so much on acquiring greater wealth.

Mark Sundeen tells about Daniel Suelo, who in 2000 left his life savings—all thirty dollars of it—in a phone booth and has lived without money ever since. In The Man Who Quit Money Sundeen gives an account of how he learned to live, sanely and happily, without earning, receiving, or spending a single cent.

Tax-advantaged accounts like the 401(k), 403(b), and 457 plans are popular ways to invest money for retirement, but unlike traditional pension plans, these plans require people to manage their investment strategies yourselves. Eleanor Laise, Editor, Kiplinger's Retirement Report, and Anthony Webb, research economist at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, discuss how these plans work, how best to manage them, and how to plan—and save—for retirement.