Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.

Alex and Grace are back to cover the biggest, and most interesting technology, startup, and markets news. Today was a fun day in that we didn't start off with just bad news -- what a change!

• Stocks are up around the world, and cryptos have rallied in the last week. The positive price movement in crypto-land, however, doesn't appear to be lighting a fire underneath the NFT market, for example.
• Robots! Yes, our robotics-themed event -- Free! And online! -- is this week, which means that I have robots on the brain. That made the Syrius round all the more interesting. It appears that ecommerce will remain a key driver of robotic innovation for some time to come.
• Podcast deals are still happening, kinda. Acast is buying Podchaser, which may or may not mean a lot to you. What does matter in this deal is that Spotify wasn't involved. That's a change!
• Quick Hits: India may ban crypto, at least if its leading bankers get there way, Missfresh's implosion Announces-Strategic-Partnership-and-RMB200-Million-Equity-Investment-from-Shanxi-Donghui.html">got a small lifeline, and Modsy is no more -- and the way that it is going out leaves quite a lot to be desired.

Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.