Sometimes the pop culture we love just teens hits differently in retrospect.

Maybe it's a tabloid story we couldn't get enough of or an illicit student-teacher relationship

on our favorite show. We're Suzy Banna-Karim and Jessica Bennett,

posts of the new podcast in retrospect, where each week we'll revisit a cultural moment from

the past that shaped us and probably you to try to understand what it taught us about the world

and our place in it. You're the first person that I've talked to about this for years and years.

Listen to in retrospect on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your favorite shows.

Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio.

Hey there and welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.

I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech are you?

Today I want to talk about how small businesses are leveraging tech and how the intersection

of small business and tech is shaping the future of work. But before we jump into that,

let's talk a bit about the recent past. And we all know that COVID-19 caused a level of disruption

that your typical Silicon Valley startup founder would only dream of. We use that word and tech a

lot disruption. And typically it's shorthand for we're doing this thing that's been done by other

companies for ages. Only we're doing it different and better. But COVID-19 wasn't entirely

different level of disruption. By the summer of 2020, 43% of small businesses had closed due to

the pandemic and some of them would never reopen. More would close over the following months.

And a lot of small businesses happen to be ones that are disproportionately affected by

requirements like social distancing. I'm talking about your restaurants, your nail salons,

your barber shops, your tattoo parlors, and what have you. But we also saw communities rally

around local small businesses that we saw an outpouring of support that buoyed businesses that

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