Kate Cox

That's the coder.

We're going to keep doing it.

Again, the caution is you don't want to narrow your audience to people who want to feel bad.

You want to expand your audience to people who love things and say, actually, your interest, your enthusiasm, that can be the push to make some of the stuff better.

Hello, and welcome to a very special episode of Decoder. I'm Kate Cox, senior producer at The Verge, and while Decoder is Nila's show about big ideas, making it all work is my problem. I'm here today with my co-producer, Nick.

And we are here with Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, who is host of Decoder and also our boss. Hi, Nilay. I love being the guest.

We're here today to talk about some reader feedback because it's our end of year show. It's our last show for 2024. And we are very excited about all the things we've heard from you this year. We have had a really busy year. We interviewed a lot of people. We published more shows this year than in any past year, thanks to our second episode that we launched back in February.

It's been a lot of work and a lot of fun. So we wanted to take a second to look back on some of our favorite themes, address your most common feedback and talk a bit about what's next.

That ties into another technical and money and systems question that our readers ask a lot, which is why don't we have chapter breaks?

Listener named Brian wrote in about our April episode where we talked to Verge reporter Liz Lopato about the rise and fall of Vice Media, which is honestly very fun. I love any time we can talk to Liz. Brian wrote, the conversation about funding sources and problems at Vice got me thinking, how can we as readers and listeners best support what you do at the Verge?

We've also had some listeners write in asking about ways to get around the paywall, not to, you know, stiff us, but for students or academic purposes like gift links or organizational memberships. Milton, who is a professor of digital marketing at University of Wisconsin at Madison said, asked us, how do I buy more?

I'd love to figure out a way to give my students easy access to articles so they don't encounter the paywall. I'd be willing to help offset the cost of individual articles I leverage. For example, could we partner together on an affiliate link approach? I'd also turn it into a meta assignment for them to learn more about affiliate marketing and the disruption in the creator and content economy.

Could we let this professor buy more Verge?

We have to take a quick break. We'll be back in just a minute.

Speaking of Blue Sky, that's where this next question came from. And I'm already laughing. It's from Caridot Peters, who writes, there's too much talk about podcasts as the primary source of information as news. And I get why. No or fewer paywalls. Do you see any alternative? Do you, Neil, I still believe in websites. Oh my God.

Also, with so many newsletters in addition to news sites, could an RSS-type solution be in the future?

So aren't we still the last website on Earth? That's the verge, right?

A lot, a lot, a lot of listeners wrote in about our interview this fall with Intuit CEO Sasan Godarzi. One example is from Jamal Khan, who wrote, "...I appreciated the tax reform questions you asked the Intuit CEO in your recent interview. They were fair, and it would have been a glaring omission if you hadn't brought it up. However, early episodes of the podcast were missing that edge."

He adds, that's why I think now is a good time to revisit some of those early interviews. Back then, it felt like you were inviting guests because you thought their companies were doing something cool and you wanted to share that with your audience. Some of those companies failed spectacularly in realizing the vision they sold us.

And so the question is, can we go back to some of our guests from the first year or two of the show and ask them newer, harder questions? Jamal specifically called out UiPath CEO Daniel Dines as someone he wants to hear from again.