TechCrunch Mixtape

Angelica Ross, co-star the FX show ‘Pose,’ joined us in the studio this week.

This week we sit down with Neil Shah, CEO of Concrn, a compassionate care app that allows people to request help for homeless people experiencing a mental health crisis.

It’s that time of the week again when Megan Rose Dickey and Henry Pickavet talk about the good and could-be-better tech companies. This week, we talked about Instacart getting caught shorting its shoppers out of dough they rightfully deserved. Of course the company apologized for its “misguided” approach. Which at least sounds better than apologizing for getting caught — and getting caught, the company did.

Screen time for kids, corporations not paying people from underrepresented groups and IBM offers some hope for the future of facial recognition technology: These are the topics that [Megan Rose Dickey][1] and [Henry Pickavet][2] dive into on this week’s episode of Mixtape. 

This week Megan Rose Dickey and I welcome Tiana Kara, the head of partnerships and growth at #builtbygirls (which, like TechCrunch, is owned by Verizon Media). We also take a look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her near-perfect ability to troll the GOP through her social media presence. And we already knew that the algorithms of some of those DNA services can yield different results. But it’s harder to take when they’re twins.

This week, Megan Rose Dickey and Henry Pickavet get into a discussion about women’s sexuality, because the world’s biggest "consumer electronics show” revoked an innovation award from Lora DiCarlo, a company that created a sex toy for women. We also discussed robot delivery dogs, because those things don’t seem like they’re ever going to go away. And finally, people continue to do stupid "Bird Box" challenges based on dumb ideas they have after watching Netflix’s hit movie starring Sandra Bullock. Stop it. 

This time Megan and Henry talk about all of those hubs in your abodes — you know, your Google Homes, your Amazon Echo Shows, your Facebook Portals …. There really are a lot. Stripe is doing a little something different when it comes to reporting diversity: It’s looking within. AR might finally have a use that we can all get behind and Super Mario Party is apparently fun to play.

Wait, what's a 'culture fund'?

This week, Megan and Henry talk about a startup called Bungalow that is trying to make the housing search a little easier. Also on tap this week was a conversation about 23andMe and its efforts to provide more specific regional data about the origins of people of color. And Sarah Cooper, comedian and author of “How to Succeed Without Hurting Men’s Feelings” joined us in the studio.

It's dogs, mac and cheese and working out this week!

Nintendo is making sure it’s still a thing

Welcome to another episode of TC Mixtape, where Senior Reporter [Megan Rose Dickey][1] and Editorial Director [Henry Pickavet][2] talk about some tech news of the week and sometimes go on field trips. This week they took a ride in a self-driving car -- and survived.

Welcome to the first episode of TechCrunch Mixtape (formerly CTRL+T). In this episode, join Senior Reporter Megan Rose Dickey and Editorial Director Henry Pickavet at San Quentin State Prison for The Last Mile’s the demo day and graduation.

Apple released the public beta of iOS 12 this week, and Megan and Henry downloaded it so they could play with the new Memoji feature. Their feelings are mixed. Also this week Microsoft improved its facial recognition technology to better detect darker skin tones. Some improvement. And finally, they spoke to Karla Monterroso, CEO of [Code2040][1], an organization dedicated to ensuring equal representation of black and Latinx people in tech.

Welcome back to CTRL+T. This week, [Megan Rose Dickey][1] and [Henry Pickavet][2] talk about the World Health Organization identifying 'gaming disorder' as a mental health issue. We disagree. Gamers gonna game. Also this week we were joined by [Adina Tecklu][3], VC at Canaan Partners. She was here to talk about Canaan Beta, which is essentially a fund within the larger Canaan fund designed to seek out "category-defining and category-creating companies."