Are you looking for podcast suggestions?

Take a look at today's Smash Notes sample


How Does Excess Carbon Dioxide Affect The Ocean?

It not only drives global warming, but it’s changing ocean chemistry, making the sea more acidic. It’s bad news for coral reefs, planktons, and us.


What Was It Like To Lay Off The Entire Gumroad Team?

Sahil knew Gumroad was running out of oxygen and the layoff were coming. When the day came though, it felt wrong. It felt like watching The Lord of The Ring, hoping for the happy ending, except that Frodo got killed and Sauron go the ring. It did not make sense.

Even though he had a support network, and people knew what was going on, failure was an awkward topic and Sahil was pretty alone. Unable to share in person, Sahil wrote a larticle about his story, called Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company.

Sahil was fully expecting to live alone in the mountains after that, but quite the opposite happened. People wanted to hear his story exactly because failures happens all the time in Silicon Valley, but no one talks about it. The post went viral!


How Do You Amass Wealth In Card Games?

David says that in order to create a high multiplier on a single card, you have to apply the same techniques that salespeople use in business; you have to figure out how to turn something of lesser value and present it as something worth much more.


How Does Someone Become Interested In The Study Of Breath?

Dr. Kishore Nannapaneni started as an engineer in India, then went to the University of Iowa for his PhD. He earned his degrees in computer science, but had always wanted to do biology. Later on, he read a book where biology studies needed computer programmers to understand genome projects, which inspired him to take the biology route.

For Dr. Patrick Schwientek, he was born and earned his degrees in Germany. After he finished his Ph.D., he went to California, and later became a colleague of Dr. Nannapanemi. It’s started with adding healthy bacteria to plant eco-soil ecosystems. Now, it’s seeing how it can be applied to humans.


How Is It Proven That The Fresh Breath Probiotics Work For Most People?

The probiotics are specifically designed to target the known strains that cause bad breath. Regardless of your conditions, there’s a high probability that the probiotics will prevail against your bacterial conditions.


What Caused Kathryn To Become Interested In Fashion?

Kathryn started competing whenever she was 21 and described the competition as an uphill battle in her own mind. She viewed herself as the underdog from Indiana. She was born about 20 minutes from Chicago, and she stated how there wasn’t a huge fashion community nor did she know anyone who was in the industry.

Kathryn purchased top designer products and believed that she could create her own designs while in school. Back then, she hadn’t realized there was a difference between being a shopper and a designer. She was proved of how wrong she was when she was in design school and was told by her teachers to drop out because she wasn’t fit to be a designer.


Does The Best Product Always Win?

Nir Eyal says it is a myth that the best product always wins.

For example, when compared in a blind test, Bing get 50% of the users, but in real life, Google has >80% of market share. Most users are already in the habit of using Google, and they just don't stop to consider other options.

Once you can get get a customer to use your product without even thinking about it, then you are no longer competing on either price or features.

Habit-formation is a huge competitive advantage.


What Is Causing Depression And Anxiety?

To each their own, but whether amazing professional athletes, or high performing entrepreneurs, anxiety is equally distributed.

In fact, the social stigma around it is only making it harder for people to share their feelings, leading to more anxiety.


Why Should Men Get More Sleep?

Men who sleep 5 to 6 hours a night we'll have a level of testosterone,which is that of someone 10 years their senior. So elective sleep will age you by a decade, in terms of wellness, muscle strength and sexual performance.


How Did The Crowd Cow Team Pick Their Business?

As Ethan and Joe, the founders of CrowdCow.com, were brainstorming ideas for a new business, their friend Brendan stumbled in with his passion for grass fed beef.

After careful consideration, they realized that not only was farm-sourced beef growing in popularity, it already had a solid devoted following, and market trends that indicated it would be a fantastic opportunity there and then.

Before embarking on the mission, they surveyed their friends and realized there was a lot of unrealized demand. People were already looking CrowdCow, all they had to do was make it a reality.


Learn from podcasts in a minute or less. Startups, tech, stories and more. Editor's choice, delivered every Wednesday. It's free!