Om Malik and Bijan Sabet discuss the impact of the Coronavirus on humanity, the economics impact, massive layoffs, the fear of a deep recession and how to get through all of it without losing your mind.

How do you take a small amount of money and turn it into a very-very large amount? One way is to invest early into a company that becomes huge, goes public, and in the process makes you very wealthy. That's Capitalism for you, and that is how Jason Calacanis turned a little bit of cash into a small fortune by investing in Uber. But does he worry about the Uber prospects for the coming years? In this Recode Decode interview with Kara Swisher, Jason shares this vision, as well as a few hot takes on Amazon, TikTok, SpaceX, and growing wealth inequality. Irresistibly, he also makes fun of Scott Galloway.

Once you get in a medical emergency in the US, you just might be more terrified of your hospital bills than you are of the actual trauma. How messed up is that? Of course, no one has a good solution, but that is no excuse. Take a listen to the first few minutes of this episode if you want to hear a gruesome (but not really) story of one dude seriously hurting himself. Honestly, you gotta listen to this one to appreciate it fully.

A few years ago, reporter Sarah McBride noticed that a top engineer at Twitter was also an expert on the brains of birds. Then, more and more, she started seeing that many top tech companies have bird brain experts in their highest ranks⁠—that includes Apple, Google, Intel and a secretive startup founded by Elon Musk. This week on Decrypted, Sarah and fellow reporter Ashlee Vance set out to understand why Silicon Valley is so interested in avian minds, and what they could tell us about tech’s ability to influence our own.

On this episode Ryan is joined by Joel Gascoigne, CEO of Buffer, a simple tool manage all your social media accounts. We've been avid users, big fans, and paying customers for years.

In this episode Ryan and Joel talk about...

* Joel's roundabout journey from the UK to the US via Hong Kong and Israel.

* What it's like to manage an 85-person completely distributed team.

* Buffer's extreme transparency and how that endears the company to its customers.

* Why (in a very unorthodox move) Buffer bought out their investors last year.

Of course, Joel also talks about some of his favorite products as well.

We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Pilot and Monday.com for their support. 😸

A growing number of experts believe that a promising technology, known as carbon capture, will be an essential part of any plan to confront climate change. But until now the science of removing carbon from the air has only ever been demonstrated at a small scale—and the process of turning that carbon into useful products, such as fuel, has cost too much to make a real difference. This week on Decrypted, meet two startups that think they may have a solution.

Tim Romero, the host of Disrupting Japan, explains what it takes to create a popular podcast, and why all the hard work is probably not worth it, unless you are absolutely in love with what you are trying to do. Tips and tricks on growing your podcast audience through social media, online discussions and offline events. This is your podcast primer from a host who has tried it all.

“There’s a consequence to the prioritization of anything. It’s about having a framework for understanding those tradeoffs, and creating a pattern of decision-making so you can have a structure for your priorities.”

“My role isn’t about seeing every pixel but setting the standard, getting the right people in place, seeing the big picture of where we are going and what we can accomplish.”