NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is inviting college students to build and design a robot that could work on Mars. We take a closer look at how competitions help foster innovation and can even bring ideas to market. Plus, more on the challenges of securing hardware and whether or not the NSA’s tampering with Cisco routers will be bad for business. Also, David Cole, a programmer who helped to build whitehouse.gov and is now running for congress in New Jersey, joins us to talk about the changing role of technology in government.

Nilay Patel, managing editor of Vox, explains what the fast lane is and why it’s like the TSA’s pre-check option. Plus, it’s time for Silicon Tally, our weekly quiz on the week in tech. This time around, we’re joined by Terry Bush, a Marketplace Tech listener from South Bend, Indiana

The Federal Communications Commission’s big day is here. The FCC votes on new rules for how Internet Service Providers deal with streaming media. These new rules, proposed by FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, leave open the possibility of “fast lane” deals, where companies could pay for their content to be delivered faster than others. And there’s news that submarine crews in this arm of the American military will be getting some new gadgets: E-readers. Definitely more compact than old school books, but at $3,000 a pop they’re not cheap. Are they a good idea?

The Federal Communications Commission will vote on new open internet rules. We’ve been talking about these new rules for a few weeks now, and how they seem to leave open a door for companies to pay for fast lane deals. This of course undermines the idea of net neutrality, which says that all content should be delivered with equal speed, and some people are very worried about how this particular season of power struggles might play out. Count among them Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota.

We’re approaching a year since Edward Snowden became a household name. Last week, the White House released a report on online privacy that may influence future policy. But for months, tech companies and users have been making their own decisions about dealing with these issues. So for a Techsplainer this week let’s talk about one of the ways tech companies are looking at the issue of government data requests. It’s called a warrant canary. Plus, we take a look at how Pinterest is starting to use native advertising and selling it for a pretty penny. In part, because the regular content is already about shopping.

With the FCC is due to vote on a plan to regulate the internet, we hear about the more than 100 major technology companies are calling on the regulator to reconsider a plan that would allow content companies to pay broadband providers for faster Internet speeds to deliver their traffic as long as the deals are  “commercially reasonable.” Also, hear about AOL rebooting Mr. Moviefone for a multi-platform era. And Janell Burley Hofmann, a parenting blogger and mother of five, talks about her new book, iRules: What Every Tech-Healthy Family Needs to Know about Selfies, Sexting, Gaming, and Growing up.

On today’s show, the latest news from the Comcast Time Warner hearings. Plus, Adrienne LaFrance, an editor and technology reporter at The Atlantic, joins us for our weekly quiz on the week in tech, Silicon Tally. Finally, Rekha Malhotra, a.k.a. DJ Rekha, who is credited with bringing Bhangra music to the United States talks to us about combining traditional folk music of India with modern dance beats, and how the technology involved in DJ-ing has evolved.

All this week, we’re talking to musicians about technology. How it’s changing their writing, performing, even how they define their art form. Our series is called Playing With Machines. It would be hard to talk about music and tech without talking to Dan Deacon. The Baltimore-based musician has developed a reputation for infectious live performances that include all kinds of technology. We spoke to Dan as he was preparing for a recent show in New York. 

John Powell, a “computer-aided composer” who has scored everything from the Bourne trilogy to the Shrek franchise, talks about his elaborate studio set-up, as well as his process of recording for film. Plus, there’s a debate now in the broadcast world about whether to change the way networks measure viewership during commercials. Currently, networks count someone as a viewer if they watch within three days of the broadcast. Now the technology exists to measure 7 days out. The question for networks is: Is viewership being under-represented right now when they strike deals with advertisers? Finally, New York Times tech columnist Molly Wood discusses the Alibaba IPO.