Here are three things to know about this week's show:

1. Larry Summers was wrong about women. Ten years after the then-president of Harvard made controversial comments about why there are so few women in science, Professor Eileen Pollack – a friend of Summers – explains that isn't because of genetics or work ethic.

2. You can now get a college degree without cracking open a book. With some textbooks costing nearly $1,000, Professor Linda Williams used open resources to develop a textbook-free degree at Tidewater Community College.

3. Your smartphone is more powerful than the computer that went to the moon. And technology keeps getting faster – and more efficient – says author Robert Bryce.

Ten years ago, Larry Summers made some remarks on the lack of women in math and science – and it created an uproar. Author and professor Eileen Pollack was so outraged, she began to research for answers. Read More...

Thanks to customizable data, fashion startup Stitch Fix makes your closet look more like a Netflix queue. Read More...

Our most precious resources are dwindling, but author Robert Bryce suggests that breakthrough technologies will actually improve the environment – and continue to make peoples’ lives better. Read More...

Inventor Percy Spencer originally worked on radars for Raytheon, but his discovery – and subsequent experiments – produced a household appliance that changed the way we consume food. Read More...

At hundreds of dollars each, college textbooks are becoming prohibitively expensive. Business administration professor Linda Williams and Ariel Diaz, founder and CEO of Boundless, are working to change that. Read More...

 
Here are three things to know about this week's show:

1. Researcher Elsa Youngsteadt crunched the numbers and found that a group of West Side Manhattan ants could eat 60,000 hotdogs a year.

2. Telemedicine laws from the 1800s are stifling modern healthcare. Doctors Ateev Mehrotra and Rushika Fernandopulle explain why updating a few laws and traditions could make a big difference for patients.

3. Seven-year-old violin prodigies don't have their gene pool to thank, argues author Geoff Colvin. Kids and adults that we think of as talented have really just practiced the right way, according to researchers.

Accountants might get a bad rap. But in an economy that’s gotten by for decades without including the real costs of production, they might also be our only hope, argues Jane Gleeson-White, author of Six Capitals, or Can Accountants Save the Planet?. Read More...

From long waits to high prices, our current primary care system is failing too many patients. Doctors Ateev Mehrotra and Rushika Fernandopulle examine ways to overhaul the system. Read More...

There may be no such thing as innate talent. Geoff Colvin, author of Talent is Overrated, has looked at the research and argues that there’s a clear – though challenging – path to the top. Read More...