Decoder with Nilay Patel

By The Verge

Technology Business

What's Decoder with Nilay Patel about?

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.

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Microsoft thinks AI can bea...

02.08.2023

I’m coming to you from Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, where just a few hours ago, Microsoft announced that the next version of the Bing search engine would be powered by OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT. There’s also a new ...

Decoder with Nilay Patel episodes:

02.08.2023 Microsoft thinks AI can beat Google at search — CEO Satya Nadella explains why I’m coming to you from Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, where just a few hours ago, Microsoft announced that the next version of the Bing search engine would be powered by OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT. There’s also a new ...
02.07.2023 How HBO’s creatives survived corporate chaos HBO started as an experiment. It was a way to get people to switch from getting TV over broadcast antennas to cable by offering events you’d otherwise need tickets to see: boxing, plays, movies. That’s where the name Home Box ...
01.31.2023 Inside the global battle over chip manufacturing A few weeks ago, President Biden was in the Netherlands, where he asked the Dutch government to restrict export from a company called ASML to China. ASML is the only company in the world that makes a specific machine needed ...
01.17.2023 Taylor Swift and the music industry's next $20 I have this theory that music is usually about five years ahead of the rest of media in terms of its relationship to tech—whether that’s new formats based on new tech, like vinyl to CDs; new business models like streaming; ...
01.10.2023 Breaking free from big tech and big content with authors Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin Last year I spoke with Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin about their new book, Chokepoint Capitalism. It’s a book about artists and technology and platforms, and how different kinds of distribution and creations tools create chokepoints for different companies to ...
12.20.2022 ‘We might be wrong, but we’re not confused’: how Tomer Cohen, chief product officer at LinkedIn, figures out what works best Tomer Cohen is the chief product officer at LinkedIn, and actually, I talked to Tomer twice. Here’s a little secret about Decoder: we do the interviews, and then often, the guest and I just keep chatting for a while. So ...
12.13.2022 How to buy a social network, with Tumblr CEO Matt Mullenweg We have to talk about Twitter, right? Elon Musk bought it. He’s making all these changes, and he’s realizing that content moderation decisions are quite complicated, especially when the stakes are high. But talking about Twitter in a vacuum seems ...
12.06.2022 Disney’s CEO drama explained, with Julia Alexander Today, we need to talk about Bob. Two Bobs, actually: Bob Iger, the former and now current CEO of Disney, and Bob Chapek, the man Iger handpicked as his replacement, who flamed out and was fired by the board, and ...
11.29.2022 How Bose compete with AirPods — and why it’s in more cars than ever, with CEO Lila Snyder Bose is one of the most recognizable audio brands in the world: it was famous for the Wave radio in the 80s, it invented noise cancellation, you can see its logo on NFL sidelines every Sunday, and of course there ...
11.22.2022 On with Kara Swisher: Can Chris Licht Turn CNN Around? Chris Licht faces an uphill battle at CNN. He got the CEO gig in the midst of a prickly merger between Warner Bros. and Discovery and right after the shocking exit of beloved long-time boss, Jeff Zucker. In his first ...
11.15.2022 Phil Spencer really wants you to know that native Call of Duty will stay on PlayStation Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, is in charge of Xbox and all the game studios that Microsoft has acquired over the years. Phil came to talk to us hours before the European Commission announced an in-depth investigation into Microsoft’s ...
11.08.2022 Why Figma is selling to Adobe for $20 billion, with CEO Dylan Field Dylan Field is the co-founder and CEO of Figma, which makes a very popular design tool that allows designers and their collaborators to all work together right in a web browser. You know how multiple people can edit together in ...
11.03.2022 The mystery of Biden’s deadlocked FCC The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is currently short a commissioner, and the Biden Administration and Senate Democrats just can't seem to get that seat filled despite having nominated an amazingly qualified person. Her name is Gigi Sohn. The inability to ...
11.01.2022 Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime I love covering the music industry, but over the past 10 years I’ve found that it’s one of the most challenging things to make accessible to a wide audience. See, my theory is that the music industry is like five ...
10.27.2022 Never pay the ransom — a cybersecurity CEO explains why Steve Cagle is the CEO of Clearwater Compliance, which is a cybersecurity firm focused on the healthcare industry. Basically, they lock down hospital computer systems, which contain a huge amount of personal data, and are so mission critical that ransomware ...
10.25.2022 The people who make your apps go to Stack Overflow for answers – here's how it works Today I'm talking to Prashanth Chandrasekar the CEO of Stack Overflow – a highly specialized kind of social network, with a really unique business model. If you don't know Stack Overflow is a major part of the modern software development ...
10.18.2022 Why Signal won’t compromise on encryption, with president Meredith Whittaker Meredith Whittaker is the president of Signal, the popular messaging app that offers encrypted communication. You might recognize Meredith’s name from 2018 when she was an AI researcher at Google and one of the organizers of the Google walkout. Now ...
10.11.2022 Mark Zuckerberg on the Quest Pro, future of the metaverse, and more Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg joined The Verge’s deputy editor Alex Heath for an in-depth conversation about the company’s new high-end, mixed reality headset, the $1,499 Quest Pro, and why he isn’t backing down from building the metaverse. Zuckerberg and Heath ...
10.04.2022 Pat Gelsinger came back to turn Intel around – here’s how it’s going Today I'm talking to Pat Gelsinger, the CEO of Intel. I’ve been excited to have this conversation for a very long time – ever since Pat took over as CEO a little over a year and a half ago. After ...
09.27.2022 How Arm conquered the chip market without making a single chip, with CEO Rene Haas One of the more interesting quirks of the modern tech world is that there’s a really important company at the center of it all that doesn’t make anything. But its work is in your phone, in your TV, your car ...
09.20.2022 Can software simplify the supply chain? Ryan Petersen thinks so Ryan Petersen, is the CEO of Flexport, ac ompany that builds software that integrates all the different shipping vendor systems you might run into as you try to get a product from a factory in China to a consumer in ...
09.13.2022 Everyone knows what YouTube is. Few know how it really works. Today, I’m talking to Mark Bergen, a reporter at Bloomberg and the author of a new book about YouTube called. Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination. YouTube has always been fascinating to me because it’s such ...
09.06.2022 Rewind: How big companies kill ideas — and how to fight back, with Tony Fadell This episode was originally published on May 3rd, 2022. Tony Fadell was instrumental in the development of the iPod and iPhone at Apple and then co-founded Nest Labs, which kicked off the consumer smart home market with its smart thermostat ...
08.30.2022 How the head of Facebook plans to compete with TikTok and win back Gen Z We’ve got a special episode of Decoder today – an interview between Verge deputy editor Alex Heath and Meta’s Tom Alison, the head of Facebook. Alex is the co-host of the newest season of Vox Media’s podcast Land of the ...
08.23.2022 Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works One thing that strikes me, in all these episodes of Decoder, is how little any of us really pay attention to the advertising industry, and how deeply connected it is to almost other every modern business. After all you can ...
08.16.2022 How Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty goes viral, with CMO Katie Welch Katie Welch is the Chief Marketing Officer of Rare Beauty — the beauty products company founded by superstar musician and actress Selena Gomez. Rare Beauty sells its products online and in Sephora retail stores, and importantly, Katie does almost no ...
08.09.2022 The risky new way of building mobile broadband networks In 2019, the Trump administration brokered a deal allowing TMobile to buy Sprint as long as it helped Dish Network stand up a new 5G network to keep the number of national wireless carriers at 4 and preserve competition in ...
08.02.2022 Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok Today I’m talking to Hank Green. Hank doesn’t need much introduction. In fact, he invited himself on Decoder to talk about YouTube's partner program, which shares ad revenue between YouTube and the people making videos. The split is 55/45 in ...
07.26.2022 Rent the Runway CEO Jennifer Hyman thinks clothing rental is inflation-proof Today we’re talking to Jennifer Hyman, co-founder and CEO of Rent the Runway. Rent the Runway is a a pretty simple idea: it’s a clothing rental and subscription business for women which launched in 2008. The basic idea is pretty ...
07.19.2022 Is the metaverse going to suck? A conversation with Matthew Ball All right, let’s talk about the metaverse. You probably can’t stop hearing about it. It’s in startup pitches, in earnings reports, some companies are creating metaverse divisions, and Mark Zuckerberg changed Facebook’s name to Meta to signal that he’s shifting ...
07.14.2022 Land of the Giants: Facebook gets a facelift This week, we're sharing the first episode of Land of the Giants: The Facebook/ Meta Disruption. Long before Mark Zuckerberg renamed Facebook Meta and made an unprecedented pivot into the metaverse, he invented a feature that turned Facebook into a ...
07.04.2022 How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus Happy Fourth of July to our listeners in the States. Decoder is only a year old, but we’ve decided a Decoder tradition is that every summer, we’re going to do an episode about the outdoor grill industry, which is gigantic ...
06.29.2022 TSA’s chief innovation officer on surveillance, security lines, and surrendering to PreCheck I’m old enough to remember what it was like to fly before 9/11 — there were no TSA lines, there was no PreCheck, and there certainly wasn’t any requirement to take off your shoes. In fact, there wasn’t any TSA ...
06.21.2022 How Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius is refocusing for an electric future Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius became CEO in 2019 but has been working for Mercedes since 1993 in almost every part of the company. During that period, Mercedes spent time getting a lot bigger; the company famously merged with Chrysler for ...
06.14.2022 How fandom built the internet as we know it, with Kaitlyn Tiffany The Verge is all about how technology make us feel. Our screens and our systems aren’t inert, or neutral – they create emotions, sometimes the strongest emotions anyone actually feels in their day to day lives. I’ve been thinking about ...
06.06.2022 What unions could mean for Apple with Zoe Schiffer Today is Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, or WWDC. It’s one of the biggest events of the year for Apple, one of the most important companies in the world. In fact, Apple is the most valuable company in the world, and ...
05.24.2022 How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war Michael is president of the Blockchain Association of Ukraine and founder of the Kuna Exchange, which lets people buy cryptocurrency and swap between them. Earlier this year, the Ukrainian government set up wallets on Kuna and other exchanges to accept ...
05.17.2022 The videos that don’t work on YouTube and the future of the creator business, with Nebula CEO Dave Wiskus One of our recurring jokes at The Verge is that every YouTuber eventually makes a video where they talk about how mad they are at YouTube. Whether it’s demonetization or copyright strikes or just the algorithm changing, YouTubers have to ...
05.13.2022 Vergecast: Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Google I/O 2022 Google I/O was this week and Nilay Patel and David Pierce had a chance to sit down with Google CEO Sundar Pichai to talk about the event and the products that were announced. This interview was recorded for The Vergecast, ...
05.10.2022 UiPath CEO Daniel Dines thinks automation can fight the great resignation Today Nilay Patel talking to Daniel Dines, the founder and CEO of UiPath, one of the biggest automation companies in the world. But not the automation you might think; UiPath sells software automation, or what consultants call “robotic process automation” ...
05.03.2022 How big companies kill ideas — and how to fight back, with Tony Fadell Tony Fadell was instrumental in the development of the iPod and iPhone at Apple and then co-founded Nest Labs, which kicked off the consumer smart home market with its smart thermostat in 2011. Tony sold Nest to Google for $3.2 ...
04.26.2022 The executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation on government surveillance, Elon Musk, and free speech Cindy Cohn is the executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF. If you’re an internet user of a certain age like me, you know the EFF as the premiere civil liberties group for the internet. The EFF has ...
04.19.2022 A former Foxconn executive tries to explain what went wrong in Wisconsin Alan Yeung is a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the former head of the Foxconn project in Wisconsin. If you don’t quite remember, the Foxconn project in Wisconsin was announced in 2017 as a massive deal ...
04.12.2022 Chris Dixon thinks web3 is the future of the internet. Is it? Chris Dixon leads crypto investing at the storied Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z. He’s responsible for leading funding rounds for Coinbase, which went public about a year ago, the NFT marketplace OpenSea, and Yuga Labs, which ...
04.05.2022 Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so Julia Alexander was the perfect guest to come on our show and talk about the state of the streaming industry – we’re a couple years into the huge shift to streaming entertainment in Hollywood, and it’s clear the streamers are ...
03.29.2022 Steve Aoki on why he’s a ‘crypto believer’ For this episode, I’m talking to Steve Aoki. He is a superstar DJ, producer, record label owner, and prolific entrepreneur. Steve has been part of the music industry since 1996, so he’s been through a lot of these big tech ...
03.22.2022 How Robinhood is building the future of investing, with chief product officer Aparna Chennapragada Aparna Chennapragada is the chief product officer at Robinhood, the popular stock and crypto trading app. And we have some news to discuss: Robinhood is launching a new cash card today that allows people to spend money directly out of ...
03.17.2022 How the EU is fighting tech giants with Margrethe Vestager Margrethe Vestager is one of the driving forces behind tech regulation worldwide. Appointed as the European Commission’s Commissioner of Competition in 2014 and an executive vice president in 2019, she’s pursued antitrust cases against Apple, Google, Meta (formerly Facebook), and ...
03.15.2022 How WordPress and Tumblr are keeping the internet weird, with Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg Matt Mullenweg is the CEO of Automattic, the company that owns WordPress.com, which he co-founded, and Tumblr, the irrepressible social network it acquired from the wreckage of AOL, Yahoo, and Verizon. Matt’s point of view is that the world is ...
03.08.2022 The future of computers is only $4 away, with Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton Today I’m talking to Eben Upton, the CEO of Raspberry Pi, a fascinating company that makes beloved tiny hackable computers that are extremely inexpensive. They’re also some of the only readily available computers that are designed to be tinkered with. ...

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