Following Mark Zuckerberg's big encryption pivot for Facebook, David, Joanna and Christopher unpack the privacy talk. Reporter Katie Bindley comes in to share her own stories of Facebook's creepy ad behavior, then David interviews Frank Yang, CEO of Simplehuman, about why talking trashcans are people too. The Weekly Upgrade: Christopher solves your ducking autocorrect problem.

Paul Romer, Nobel Laureate, discusses the coronavirus pandemic with host Russ Roberts. He argues that the status quo of shutdown and fear of infection is unsustainable. Returning to normal requires an inexpensive, quick, and relatively painless test. The challenge is in relaxing certain regulations and then creating a supply chain of production and availability. Romer then explains how such a test could ease a return to something like normalcy for many sectors of the economy. The conversation concludes with a discussion of the dynamics of the labor market in the current situation.

Geoff Ralston is a successful investor and entrepreneur, living in the heart of Silicon Valley. He founded Yahoo Mail, invested in hundreds of companies, and has seen dozens of successful exists. On this episode Kirill Zubovsky and Geoff Ralston discuss the price of entrepreneurship, challenges of modern-day parenting, device addiction, performance drugs, standardized tests and the future of education.

Alex Snodgrass, aka The Defined Dish, has built a social media following that would make any brand jealous, with over hundreds of thousands of followers engaging around her simple and incredibly tasty whole30 and paleo dish recipes every day. She has all the social media (and in real life) love that creates a pretty pristine Above the Line version of her business.

But a simple ingredient that made the conversation with this creator such an interesting one was her honesty on what it’s really like to be a social media “influencer”. We talk about everything from the fact that 2 years in (and with little traction), deciding if it was still worth doing, simplification being a key to success, anxiety attacks and the importance of investing in mental health — and in the midst of naturally being a people-pleaser, and having a spouse, two daughters, employees and hundreds of thousands of people that would want some of her time requires something simple and powerful: a checklist of things that helps remind her daily what she needs to do for herself.

It’s a special episode of Below The Line with Alex today — we hope you enjoy it.

About the host: James Beshara is an angel investor, advisor, founder, and general startup-helper in San Francisco, California. He has started three companies, sold one (Tilt; acq by Airbnb), and angel invested in multiple billion-dollar startups in his career. And now he's talking openly and honestly with leaders about what's going on "below the line" in their lives and careers that has made them the people that the are; the 90% of the story you don't read about or hear about anywhere else.

If you have any questions, feel free to email us at askbelowtheline@gmail.com and follow us on twitter @belowthelinepodcast or follow James @JamesBeshara.

"Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts, LLC.

Burt Blackarach is a Grammy-award winning composer, producer, DJ, and sound engineer. You may know his work in producing for iconic groups like Public Enemy.

Born into a creative family, Burt got to see his father (legendary soul and rock keyboard player and songwriter William D. "Smitty" Smith) collaborate with everyone from Bob Dylan to Rick James to Fleetwood Mac — and it ignited his love of creating music as well.

But what is it like to heed the call to adventure in creating music for a living? What is the inner journey like for someone as accomplished and established as Burt? Let’s get into it with Burt on Below the Line with James Beshara.

Email James questions at askbelowtheline@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC. 

Parenting expert and multiple best-selling author Dr. Laura Markham breaks down the three keys to successful discipline, how to properly model emotions and conflict resolution, and the coveted recipe for raising happy, resilient kids. --- For...

I sit down with Julian Weisser, who does Growth for a company called Virta Health which has figured out a way to reverse type II diabetes without the use of medication. Julian was an absolute blast to talk to and is one of those behind the scenes...

From TeachStreet acquisition by Amazon to Dave's current musings at MyPerfectColor, he shares his thoughts on raising venture and why it does not make sense to wait and struggle.

Which is better: B2C or B2B? When should you walk away from a sale? How do you make difficult decisions?