Podcasts · Business · Technology
Decoder with Nilay Patel
The Verge
300 episodes
Decoder is a show from The Verge about big ideas — and other problems. Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel talks to a diverse cast of innovators and policymakers at the frontiers of business and technology to reveal how they’re navigating an ever-changing landscape, what keeps them up at night, and what it all means for our shared future.
Episodes page 2 of 6
-
How Sundar Pichai is rethinking Google for the AI era
Connecting with Google CEO Sundar Pichai at I/O every year is one of my favorite Decoder traditions. This was our fifth year doing it, and there’s always a whole slew of new things to talk about. This year, in…
-
Musk v Altman: Much ado about nothing
Musk v Altman was nominally about OpenAI's conversion to a for-profit entity, and how it went about that change. But really, the suit seems mostly to have been about Elon Musk being mad at Sam Altman — or at OpenAI,…
-
Exclusive: Jonah Peretti explains why he sold BuzzFeed
Just days before we spoke, BuzzFeed co-founder and CEO Jonah Peretti agreed to sell the company, which was losing money and at risk of shutting down. Now there’s a new lease on life — and new leadership. Jonah is…
-
How companies weaponize the terms of service against you
Brendan Ballou is founder of the Public Integrity Project and author of the new book, When Companies Run the Courts, about the rise of forced arbitration. Forced arbitration is similarly everywhere in modern life, and…
-
Joanna Stern is not a robot, but she lived with them
My guest today is longtime friend of the show Joanna Stern. You all know Joanna: she is the former senior personal technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal, a former Decoder guest host, one of my co-founders at…
-
Rewind: How AI is fueling an existential crisis in education
Hey, everyone, Nilay here. We’re off today, while the team and I are cooking on a lot of really great stuff in the coming weeks. We’ll be back with an all-new interview on Monday. In the meantime, we really wanted to…
-
Dara Khosrowshahi on replacing Uber drivers — and himself — with AI
It’s become an annual tradition to have Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi join us in the studio when he comes to New York for Uber’s big Go-Get event every year. This year, the big news was that Uber's expanding into a much…
-
How to win — or lose — Decoder
This is Nick Statt, senior producer on Decoder. We last ran a mailbag episode during the holidays, and we decided it was a good idea to do that kind of thing more often. So we’re back with Nilay as the guest, answering…
-
That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks
Jennifer Scanlon is CEO of UL Solutions, one of those hidden-in-plain-sight companies we like to poke at here on Decoder. UL's been around for more than 100 years; it started as a way for insurance companies to…
-
THE PEOPLE DO NOT YEARN FOR AUTOMATION
Today on Decoder, I want to lay out an idea that's been banging around my head for weeks now as we've been reporting on AI and having conversations here on this show. I've been calling it software brain, and it's a…
-
Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software
The last time Canva CEO Melanie Perkins was on Decoder, the company was starting a big push into enterprise. Now, she's leading it through a total reinvention, going, in Canva's words, "from a design platform with AI…
-
Ronan Farrow on Sam Altman's "unconstrained" relationship with the truth
Today I’m talking with Ronan Farrow, one of the biggest stars of investigative reporting working today. He broke the Harvey Weinstein story, among many, many others. Just last week, he and co-author Andrew Marantz…
-
Can Puck’s CEO reinvent the news business for the influencer age?
Sarah Personette is the CEO of Puck, a media company that's been around for about five years. Puck hires big star reporters who write newsletters as part of a subscription bundle. Those newsletters are often must-reads…
-
The AI industry's existential race for profits
Today, let’s talk about the looming AI monetization cliff, and whether some of the biggest companies in space can become real, profitable businesses before they careen right off it. My guest today is Hayden Field,…
-
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins wants data centers in space
My guest today is Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins. Cisco is one of those big companies that everyone has heard of but most of us don’t have to interact with very much; they’re not really a consumer brand. But without Cisco's…
-
A jury says Meta and Google hurt a kid. What now?
Today, we’re talking about the landmark social media addiction trials that just resulted in two major verdicts against Big Tech — one in California against Meta and Google, and another in New Mexico against just Meta.…
-
Okta's CEO is betting big on AI agent identity
My guest today is Okta CEO Todd McKinnon. Okta is a platform that big companies use to manage security and identity across all the many apps and platforms their employees use. Most of us run into it as login management…
-
Everyone hates Ticketmaster. Why'd Trump go easy on them?
Today, we’re talking about the major antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation, and what it might mean for antitrust and competition law in general now that the Trump DOJ has decided to settle…
-
Confronting the CEO of the AI company that impersonated me
Today, I’m talking with Shishir Mehrotra, the CEO of Superhuman, the company formerly known as Grammarly, which is still its flagship product. Back in August, Grammarly shipped a feature called Expert Review, which…
-
Paramount's $110 billion Warner Bros. gamble
Today, let’s talk about the big Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. Right now, Paramount head David Ellison is very much acting like he’s over the finish line after outbidding Netflix, which walked away after what…
-
Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone on reviving the web's homepage
Jim Lanzone is the CEO of Yahoo. It's basically impossible to sum up Yahoo's story over the last 25 years, but the short version is that once upon a time, Yahoo paid Google to run the search box on its website, and…
-
Anthropic doesn't trust the Pentagon, and neither should you
My guest today is Mike Masnick, the founder and CEO of Techdirt, the excellent and long-running tech policy blog. Mike has been writing about government overreach, privacy in the digital age, and other related topics…
-
Hasbro's CEO lets AI Peppa Pig help design toys
Hasbro might be a toy company, but CEO Chris Cocks has spent the last several years pushing it more and more into the digital media, gaming, and collectibles space. That makes sense, since adults have money and kids…
-
Prediction markets want to be the news
Today let’s talk about prediction markets, which continue to insert themselves into the news cycle and the news in increasingly weird, unsettling, and potentially illegal ways. My guest today is Liz Lopatto, a senior…
-
Zillow's CEO on growth during a housing crisis
Today, I’m talking with Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman. Zillow is one of those apps that really exemplifies what you might call the smartphone era of software: the company built a great mobile app for looking at real…
-
Inside Xbox's executive shakeup
Today, we’re talking about the future of Xbox. Phil Spencer, a two-time Decoder guest who’s led Xbox for more than a decade, is stepping down. But in a shocking twist, his deputy long-assumed successor Sarah Bond is…
-
Hank Green lets loose on YouTube, billionaires, and algorithms
Today, I’m talking with Hank Green, a longtime friend of Decoder and the co-founder and now former owner of Complexly, an online education company he started with his brother John in 2012. I say former owner because…
-
Money no longer matters to AI's top talent
Today we're talking about the war for AI talent. Right now, the hottest job market on the planet is for AI researchers. And the vast majority of these people are concentrated into a small number of hugely valuable,…
-
Let's talk about Ring, lost dogs, and the surveillance state
Today, we're talking about the camera company Ring, lost dogs, and the surveillance state. Since it aired for a massive audience at the Super Bowl, Ring’s Search Party commercial has become a lightning rod for…
-
The surprising case for AI judges
My guest today is Bridget McCormack, former chief justice for the Michigan Supreme Court and now president and CEO of the American Arbitration Association. For the past several years, Bridget and her team have been…
-
Siemens CEO's mission to automate everything
Siemens is one of those absolutely giant, extremely important, fairly opaque companies we love to dig into on Decoder. At a very basic, reductive level, Siemens makes the hardware and software that let other companies…
-
Reality is losing the deepfake war
Today, we’re going to talk about reality, and whether we can label photos and videos to protect our shared understanding of the world around us. To do this, I sat down with Verge reporter Jess Weatherbed, who covers…
-
Docusign's CEO on the dangers of trusting AI to read, and write, your contracts
Today, I’m talking with Allan Thygesen, who is the CEO of Docusign. You know Docusign, it’s the platform that lets you sign stuff online. It turns out 7,000 people work there, which is one of those facts floating…
-
Netflix is eating Hollywood — because it has to
Today, we’re talking about the bidding war over Warner Bros. Discovery, which is the biggest story in the entertainment industry right now, and for good reason. It has pretty much everything you could want in a buzzy…
-
Experian's tech chief defends credit scores: 'We're not Palantir'
Experian is one of those giant multinationals convoluted enough to have multiple CEOs all over the world, so first I asked Alex Lintner, Experian's CEO of technology and software solutions, to dig into the classic…
-
Why nobody's stopping Grok
Grok, the chatbot made by Elon Musk’s xAI, is able to make all manner of AI-generated images on demand, including non-consensual intimate images of women and minors. It's the kind of "controversy" that would have…
-
Razer CEO on AI in game dev, Grok, and anime waifus
We’re back to start the year with a very special live interview with Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan, which we taped in front of a terrific audience at Brooklyn Bowl in Las Vegas during CES. At this year’s show, Razer made…
-
Rewind: How private equity kills companies and communities
Hey everyone, it’s Nilay. We’re settling back in here after the winter break and CES, and we’ll have new episodes for you starting next Monday. In the meantime, we wanted to highlight one of our favorites from last…
-
Dropout CEO Sam Reich on the business of subscription comedy
We’ve got something special for you today. It’s my friend Hank Green, longtime YouTuber, science educator, and viral TikTok star, interviewing Dropout CEO Sam Reich. Hank did this episode as a guest host over the…
-
What’s next for Netflix and Paramount in the Warner Bros. battle
Hey everyone, it’s Nilay. Decoder is on our holiday break. We’ve got a lot of fun stuff coming up in the New Year, though, including a special Decoder Live at CES. Stay tuned for more details, including how to RSVP for…
-
"All chaos and panic": Nilay answers your burning Decoder questions
Hey everyone! Decoder senior producers Kate Cox and Nick Statt here. We’ve had a big year, including nearly 100 episodes, a new YouTube channel, an ad-free podcast feed, and a slate of great guest hosts while Nilay was…
-
Stack Overflow users don't trust AI. They're using it anyway
Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar was last on the show in 2022 — just one month before ChatGPT launched and upended literally everything for Stack Overflow in a deeply existential way. He called a company…
-
Sen. Ed Markey wants media companies to fight for the First Amendment
Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey and I agree it seems like democracy is on the line right now, especially around the First Amendment and the increasing pressure the Trump administration — especially FCC chair Brendan Carr…
-
Square's product chief on the death of the penny and the future of money
Today, I’m talking with Willem Avé, who’s the head of product at Square. You know Square — it was started by billionaire Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame more than 15 years ago, and it got big on the back of that little…
-
The tiny team trying to keep AI from destroying everything
Today, I’m talking with Verge senior AI reporter Hayden Field about some of the people responsible for studying AI and deciding in what ways it might… well, ruin the world. Those folks work at Anthropic as part of a…
-
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna says there is no AI bubble after all
IBM was instrumental to the entire 20th century of computing — but it's a lot harder for most of us to see what it's been up to during this century. That's because it's fully an enterprise company, and CEO Arvind…
-
What the climate story gets wrong
Hey everyone, it's Nilay. It’s been great being back in the Decoder chair this fall, and we’ve got a bunch of great episodes coming up to round out the year. But the production team is off this week for the holiday, so…
-
The DoorDash Problem: How AI browsers are a huge threat to Amazon
Okay, let’s talk about AI and what I’ve been calling the “DoorDash problem.” This is about to define the next battle in AI, and it might completely transform not only how you order a sandwich, but also how the entire…
-
Ring's Jamie Siminoff thinks AI can reduce crime
Jamie Simonoff, founder of Ring, won't let me call him the CEO. He says his title is and always has been 'chief inventor.' His mission with Ring is to make the world safer, and he has a pretty expansive view of what…
-
The company at the heart of the AI bubble
So a lot of people think AI is a bubble. So we sent Verge senior reporter Liz Lopatto out to report on the AI bubble — whether it's real, how it might pop, and what all of this means. She’s joining the show today to…
More in Business
REAL AF with Andy Frisella
Andy Frisella
Unblinded with Sean Callagy
Sean Callagy
The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk
Ryan Hawk
Proven Podcast
Charles Schwartz
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha: Entrepreneurship and Self-Improvement Podcast
Hala Taha | Entrepreneurship, Sales, Marketing | YAP Media Network
Habits and Hustle
Jen Cohen
Coffeez with Joe Shalaby
Joseph Shalaby
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
Paul Alex Espinoza
We Fixed It, You're Welcome
We Fixed It, You're Welcome
Bred To Lead
Dr. Jake Tayler Jacobs
The Code To Winning
Kagiso Dikane
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
DOAC
Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them. Explicit shows are for adult profiles only, and children’s profiles hear only children’s shows. More about this list.