On today’s show, novelist and English professor Eileen Pollack is discussing her new book, The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys’ Club (Beacon Press, September 2015). Pollack graduated from Yale with a bachelor’s degree in physics, but she believes that a lack of encouragement, and even active discouragement, led her to pursue a career in the humanities instead of male-dominated STEM fields. This book is a response to Larry Summers’s famous comments about women in science, urging us as a society to foster women’s increased participation in STEM.

Music this hour:

• “Forgiven Not Forgotten” by Jahzzar, from the album Kuddelmuddel
• “Flutter” by Jahzzar, from the album Onus
• “Soldiertype (militarised)” by Ketsa, from the album What’s Without’s Within