Decoder with Nilay Patel

Why Uber's CEO is okay with reinventing the bus

22 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. We recorded this conversation on the same day Uber announced a big set of product updates, inclu...

Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott on how AI can save the web, not destroy it

19 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Kevin Scott, the chief technology officer of Microsoft, and one of the company’s AI leaders. Kevin is one of my favorite r...

Workday's new product head hopes he can make you like Workday

15 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Gerrit Kazmaier, the brand-new president of product and technology at Workday. Gerrit’s new on the job, maybe a little bit...

Did Apple get too big for its own good?

12 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We’re doing something a little different today — I asked my friend John Gruber of Daring Fireball to come on the show and talk about the future of...

Reuters is ready to stand up for the press — and embrace AI

08 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Paul Bascobert, who is the president of Reuters, as part of a special Thursday series we’re running this month to explore ...

NYT publisher AG Sulzberger on Trump, OpenAI, and the economy

05 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hey everyone, it’s Nilay. We’re off today, but we’ll be back Thursday, so stay tuned. In the meantime, we have an excellent episode from Busines...

What Trump has broken in 100 days

01 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A lot has happened in the first 100 days of Trump's second term. It’s nearly too much to keep up with, really, but we're going to try. Verge policy ...

Decoder Live: Fired FTC commissioners fight back

28 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A few days ago, I hosted a panel with FTC commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya at the IAPP Global Privacy Summit in Washington, DC. We re...

The case for breaking up Google has never been stronger

24 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today we’re talking about the very real possibility that Google might be broken up by the United States government. And to do that, I’m talking to...

Verizon’s consumer chief: Net neutrality ‘went literally nowhere’

21 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As CEO of Verizon's consumer division, Sowmyanarayan Sampath oversees the biggest part of the company, which does business with roughly a third of the...

How Trump’s tariffs actually work on the ground

17 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

One of the ways I’ve been trying to sort out the chaos of tariffs and trade wars is by talking to the people behind the software that makes the glob...

Are prediction markets gambling? Robinhood's Vlad Tenev is betting not

14 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Vlad Tenev, the co-founder and CEO of Robinhood, which started as a way to open up stock trading. But the company’s ambiti...

Why DOGE is killing the agency that stops banks from ripping you off

10 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Rohit Chopra was the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau head until the end of January, when President Donald Trump fired him and Elon Musk’s DOGE ...

UiPath CEO Daniel Dines on AI agents replacing our jobs

07 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Daniel Dines, the co-founder and once again the CEO of UiPath, a software company that specializes in something called robot...

What AI anime memes tell us about the future of art and humanity

03 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, we’re diving head first into the AI art debate, which to be honest, is an absolute mess. If you’ve been on the internet this past week, you...

How Unity CEO Matt Bromberg stopped the ‘war’ against its customers

31 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Unity is one of those hidden in plain sight companies we love here on Decoder, and CEO Matt Bromberg is in many ways the perfect Decoder guest. He's b...

Capitalism vs. the bird flu

27 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today we’re talking about bird flu, but in a pretty Decoder way. Science journalist Lauren Leffer, who recently wrote a piece for The Verge about bi...

Splice CEO Kakul Srivastava on why push-button AI is “insulting” to musicians

24 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Kakul Srivastava, CEO of music creation platform Splice, which is one of the biggest marketplaces around for loops and sampl...

The movement to take down Tesla

20 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today we're talking about the Tesla Takedown protest movement, which has emerged as a way for people to express how deeply unhappy they are with Elon ...

How Trump's tariff chaos is already changing global trade

17 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

I'm talking to Evan Smith, who started Altana in 2019 because he predicted the first wave of globalized manufacturing and trade would end, and that co...

Why the Take It Down Act is a not a law, but a weapon

13 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking to Verge policy editor Adi Robertson about a bill called the Take It Down Act, which is one in a long line of bills that would ma...

Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news

10 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Almar Latour is the publisher of the Wall Street Journal and also CEO of its parent company, Dow Jones — itself a part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp...

Flying is still safe, for now — but the FAA isn’t

06 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

So today I’m talking to Andy Hawkins, The Verge’s transportation editor, about what’s going on in the skies. Andy just edited a big piece for us...

Amazon’s Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s AI overhaul

03 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Panos Panay is in charge of devices and services at Amazon — that's everything from Alexa and Kindle to Ring, Eero, and even the Project Kuiper sate...

Elon Musk's polarizing ascent in the MAGA movement

27 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This is Alex Heath, deputy editor of The Verge. I’m guest hosting today’s episode while Nilay is still away for a much-needed vacation. He’ll be...

Vimeo CEO Philip Moyer is betting on the human touch — and AI

24 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Vimeo started many years ago as something of an artsier, more creative competitor to YouTube. Its last CEO, Anjali Sud, took the company through a pre...

Why gaming never had its Netflix moment

20 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This is David Pierce, editor-at-large at The Verge. Nilay is off this week for a much-deserved break. So I’m filling in for him, and the Decoder tea...

The FCC is a now a weapon in Trump’s war on free speech

13 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The First Amendment, protecting free speech and free media, is a pillar of US law. It is, famously, the first one. We don’t usually tolerate governm...

Sen. Ron Wyden is here to stop Elon Musk

10 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Senator Ron Wyden, a democrat and the senior senator from Oregon. He’s been in the Senate for almost 30 years, which makes...

Elon Musk's presidency is just getting started

06 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, we’re discussing a very big problem with extremely far-reaching consequences: Do we still have a functional federal government here in the Un...

Bookshop CEO Andy Hunter's crusade to save books from Amazon

03 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Andy Hunter is the CEO of Bookshop.org, a website he launched in 2020 that lets local bookshops sell all over the country. He always meant it to compe...

DeepSeek, Stargate, and the new AI arms race

30 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, we’re talking about DeepSeek, and how the open source AI model built by a Chinese startup has completely upended the conventional wisdom arou...

How Ciena keeps the internet online, with CEO Gary Smith

27 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Gary Smith, CEO of the networking company Ciena. You probably aren’t familiar with Ciena — the company isn’t really a ...

How Meta's MAGA heel turn is a play for global power

23 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s been a messy couple of weeks for big tech companies as the second Trump administration kicks off an unprecedented era of how we think about who...

Why CEO Matt Garman is willing to bet AWS on AI

13 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Matt Garman, the CEO of Amazon Web Services. Matt took over as CEO last June — you might recall that we had his predecesso...

Studying online bad behavior was hard. It's going to get harder in Trump 2.0

06 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hello, Nilay here. We’re still on winter break; we’ll be back with brand-new Decoder interviews next week, and with our Thursday shows later this ...

Answering your biggest Decoder questions

20 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Decoder team turns the tables on Nilay and makes him answer your burning listener questions in our end-of-year wrap up special. We also reflect on...

Tech antitrust is about to get really weird

18 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today we’re talking about antitrust policy and tech, which is at a particularly weird moment as we enter the second Trump administration. A lot of t...

Arm CEO Rene Haas on the AI chip race, Intel, and what Trump means for tech

16 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Alex Heath, Deputy Editor at The Verge, guest hosts this episode of Decoder featuring a live interview with Arm CEO Rene Haas about the future of AI a...

Platforms need the news, but they're killing it

13 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We’ve been talking a lot this year about the changing internet, and what it’s doing to the media ecosystem — particularly journalism, which has ...

Why every company wants a podcast now

11 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There’s something strange happening these days in the podcast world — in particular, the way companies that deal in money have been using podcasti...

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman says conversational AI is the next web browser

09 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI. Mustafa is a fascinating character in the world of AI — he’s been in and out ...

AI is a money pit — here’s why investors don’t mind

05 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

AI investment is massive, but AI profits are not — and yet investors seem confident massive AI fundraising will one day translate into sizable AI p...

Rewind: Bluesky CEO Jay Graber on the future of federated social media

02 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Bluesky has really taken off since the election, and since the Decoder team took some time off for Thanksgiving break, we felt it was a great time to ...

GoDaddy CEO Aman Bhutani on the enduring power of the website

25 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I spoke with GoDaddy CEO Aman Bhutani live on stage last week at an event hosted by Alix Partners in Palo Alto. GoDaddy is one of those companies that...

Remix: Google Zero is here — now what?

21 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For nearly 20 years now, the web has been Google’s platform; we’ve all just lived on it. Google is constantly changing that platform — it launch...

Will the world end before I can retire?

18 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Hey everyone, it’s Nilay — Decoder is on a short break this week. We’ll be back with a special live interview episode on Monday of next week, an...

How Trump’s second term could be bad for EVs, but great for Tesla

14 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today we’re talking about Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Tesla — and I have to say, it feels like the first of many episodes about these three chara...

Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr.

11 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Harvey Mason, Jr is CEO of the Recording Academy, the nonprofit organization most famous for the Grammy Awards. We spoke right before this year's Gram...

Return-to-office mandates are more than "backdoor layoffs"

07 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, we’re talking about work. Specifically, where we work, how our expectations of working remotely were radically changed by the pandemic, and h...

Why GM ditched CarPlay, with software boss Baris Cetinok

04 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Baris Cetinok, who is in charge of all the software in the cars that GM makes, which is a lot of cars. And if you’ve been ...

“It’s the First Amendment, stupid”

31 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Trump and a bunch of billionaires, like Elon Musk, are calling for the FCC to punish TV stations by revoking their licenses and using the spectrum for...

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means

28 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, who is only the second person to be on Decoder three times — the other is Meta CEO Mark Zuckerber...

The AI arms race to build digital god

24 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, we’re going to try and figure out "digital god." I figured we’ve been doing Decoder long enough, let’s just get after it. Can we build an...

Intuit asked us to delete part of this Decoder episode

21 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s episode, well — it’s a ride. I’m talking to Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi, who’s built Intuit into a juggernaut business software compan...

How influencers are changing advertising with Digitas CEO Amy Lanzi

17 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s episode is a little different: Digitas CEO Amy Lanzi and I recorded this conversation live on stage during advertising week in New York City...

Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn wants you addicted to learning

14 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Luis von Ahn is the co-founder and CEO of Duolingo. There are lots of opportunities to enhance a product like Duolingo with AI, and we talk about all ...

The impossible dream of good workplace software

10 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I’m talking with my good friend David Pierce, Vergecast co-host and The Verge’s editor-at-large, about something he spends an ungodly amount of ti...

Rabbit CEO Jesse Lyu isn't thinking too far ahead

07 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Rabbit’s adorable R1 gadget launched with a lot of hype, but early reviews of the device were universally bad. Now, a core feature, its long-promise...

The toxic transformation of Warcraft maker Blizzard

03 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking to Jason Schreier, a Bloomberg journalist and author of the new book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainm...

NBCU's streaming chief isn't worried about you canceling cable

30 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Matt Strauss is the Chairman of Direct-to-Consumer at NBC Universal. That’s a big fancy title that means he’s not only in charge of Peacock but al...

Why Mark Zuckerberg wants to end the smartphone era

25 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We have a very special episode of Decoder today. It’s become a tradition every fall to have Verge deputy editor Alex Heath interview Meta CEO Mark Z...

Arc creator Josh Miller on why you need a better browser than Chrome

23 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Josh Miller, co-founder and CEO of The Browser Company, a relatively new software maker that develops the Arc browser. The c...

Why Google is back in court for another monopoly showdown

19 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Google’s in the middle of its antitrust case in just as many months, after it lost a landmark trial in August over anticompetitive search practices....

How Philips CEO Roy Jakobs is turning the company around after major recall

16 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Roy Jakobs. He’s the CEO of Royal Philips, which makes medical devices ranging from MRI machines to ventilators. Philips h...

Why AI image editing isn’t “just like Photoshop”

12 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We’ve been covering the rise of AI image editing very closely here on Decoder and at The Verge for several years now — the ability to create photo...

Anthropic’s Mike Krieger wants to build AI products that are worth the hype

09 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Mike Krieger, the new chief product officer at Anthropic, one of the hottest AI companies in the industry. Anthropic’s mai...

How the Wayback Machine is fighting linkrot

05 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The web has a problem: huge chunks of it keep going offline. The web isn’t static, parts of it sometimes just… vanish. But it’s not all grim. T...

The AI election deepfakes have arrived

29 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Decoder is off this week for a short end-of-summer break. We’ll be back with both our interview and explainer episodes after the Labor Day holiday. ...

Disney Is a Tech Company?

26 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Decoder is off this week for a short end-of-summer break. We’ll be back with both our interview and explainer episodes after the Labor Day holiday, ...

How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral

22 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Onion is a comedy institution — and like everything else in media, it went on a pure nightmare hell ride in the 2010s. We could do an entire epi...

GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke says the AI industry needs competition to thrive

19 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today I’m talking with Thomas Dohmke, the CEO of GitHub. GitHub is the platform for managing code – but since 2018, it’s also been owned by Micr...

What's next for the controversial 'child safety' internet bill

15 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There’s a major internet speech regulation currently making its way through Congress, and it has a really good chance of becoming law. It’s called...

Replika CEO Eugenia Kuyda says it’s okay if we end up marrying AI chatbots

12 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Replika founder and CEO Eugenia Kuyda, and I will just tell you right away, we get all the way to people marrying their AI c...

DOJ antitrust chief is ‘overjoyed’ after Google monopoly verdict

08 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking to Jonathan Kanter, the assistant attorney general for antitrust at the United States Department of Justice. This is Jonathan’s...

Booking CEO Glenn Fogel wants you to take out your travel frustrations on AI chatbots

05 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Glenn Fogel, the CEO of Booking Holdings, which owns a large portfolio of familiar travel brands: OpenTable, Kayak, and Pric...

AI has a climate problem — but so does all of tech

01 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Every time we talk about AI, we get one big piece of feedback that I really want to dive into: how the lightning-fast explosion of AI tools affects th...

Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever

29 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Hanneke Faber, the CEO of Logitech. Hanneke’s still pretty fresh to the role: She joined the company last October, after f...

The Supreme Court ruling that could kill net neutrality

25 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Supreme Court has just taken on the entire idea of the US administrative state — and the Court is winning. Earlier this month, a conservative ma...

Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe says too many carmakers are copying Tesla

22 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe. RJ was on the show last September when we chatted at the Code Conference, but the past 1...

What happened to the metaverse?

18 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This week I’m talking to Matthew Ball, who was last on the show in 2022 to talk about his book “The Metaverse: How it Will Revolutionize Everythi...

Biden’s top tech advisor on why AI safety is a “today problem”

15 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Arati Prabhakar, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. That’s a cabinet-level position,...

Why The Atlantic signed a deal with OpenAI

11 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today I’m talking to Nicholas Thompson, the CEO of The Atlantic. I was really excited to talk to Nick. Like so many media CEOs, including Vox Media’...

Canva CEO Melanie Perkins is happy to provide designers alternatives to Adobe

08 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Canva got its start more than a decade ago as a different form of disruptive tech for creatives. It’s a web-based platform that makes design tools c...

How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking

01 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It’s almost the Fourth of July, and that means it’s time for our annual grilling episode. This year, I’m talking with Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gert...

The rise of shadow lobbying and its influence on decades of US policy

27 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, we’re talking about politics and lobbying in America. It’s hard to imagine a time when the influence of big corporations and billionaires d...

Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in

24 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Greg Peters, the co-CEO of Netflix. I caught up with Greg while he was at the Cannes Lions festival in France, which is basi...

Inside the players and politics of the AI industry

20 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We’ve got a special episode of the show today – I was traveling last week, so Verge deputy editor Alex Heath and our new senior AI reporter Kylie ...

Why Tubi CEO Anjali Sud thinks free TV can win again

17 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Tubi is a free and very rapidly growing streaming TV platform — according to Nielsen, it had an average of a million viewers watching every minute i...

Remix: How private equity took over everything

13 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Private equity is a simple concept — a PE firm uses some combination of money and debt to buy a company, then makes a profit — but the reality of ...

AI will make money sooner than you think, says Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez

10 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Cohere is one of the buzziest AI startups around right now. It's not making consumer products; it's focused on the enterprise market and making AI pro...

Why the video game industry is such a mess

06 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The art of video game design is flourishing, but it feels like a really grim time to be in the business of making and distributing games. Huge global ...

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan wants AI clones in meetings

03 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Zoom CEO Eric Yuan — and let me tell you, this conversation is nothing like what I expected. It turns out Eric wants Zoom ...

Google Zero is here. Now what?

30 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For nearly 20 years now, the web has been Google’s platform; we’ve all just lived on it. I think of Decoder as a show for people trying to build t...

How the FBI built its own smartphone company to hack the criminal underworld

23 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Joseph Cox, one of the best cybersecurity reporters around and a co-founder of the new media site 404 Media. Joseph has a ne...

Google's Sundar Pichai on AI-powered search and the future of the web

20 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who joined the show the day after the big Google I/O developer conference. Google’s focus during t...

TikTok's big bet to fight the ban bill

16 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Last week, TikTok filed a lawsuit against the US government claiming the divest-or-ban law is unconstitutional — a case it needs to win in order to ...

Why Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen is confident we'll all adapt to AI

13 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen has been at the top of my list of people I’ve wanted to talk to for the show since we first launched — he’s led Adobe...

Why the tech industry can’t crack the smart home

09 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, we’re going to talk about the smart home — one of the oldest, most important, and most challenging dreams in the history of the tech indust...

Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath on life after Volvo and weathering the EV slowdown

06 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath, whom I first interviewed on the show back in 2021. Those were heady days — especially for u...