Decoder with Nilay Patel

Investor Ellen Pao talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about her new book, “Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change,” which chronicles Pao’s 2015 court battle against her former employer, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. She reflects on why the gender discrimination lawsuit ultimately failed, and why Pao believes it nevertheless laid the groundwork for future whistleblowers like ex-Uber employee Susan Fowler. She also talks about her ensuing work as interim CEO of Reddit, what she thinks of the controversial memo written by former Google engineer James Damore, and why we shouldn’t take tech companies’ proclamations of “free speech” idealism at face value.

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Sally Quinn, the author of "Finding Magic: A Spiritual Memoir," talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about her new book and her career in journalism. Quinn got her start covering the Washington, D.C., party circuit for the Washington Post under its then-Editor Ben Bradlee, whom she later married. Quinn became an atheist early in her chilhood, but her views of religion evolved over time, leading her to become the Post's religion columnist and one of its first bloggers. She says the inspiration for her book came from how — in Bradlee's final years, when he developed dementia — she realized that taking care of him gave her life meaning. Plus: The real story behind the now-infamous "hexes" Quinn used to cast on people and why Donald Trump's real religion is the "prosperity gospel."

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New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman and Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold talk with Recode's Kara Swisher at the 2017 Texas Tribune Festival in Austin. Both known for their coverage of Donald Trump's campaign and White House, they talk about how they accidentally became Trump reporters and what others in the media get wrong about the president. They also explain how they, as journalists, use Twitter — which Haberman calls "the anger video game" — and what they would be reporting on if they were not on the Trump beat.

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Maha Ibrahim, a general partner at Canaan Partners, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about her more than 17 years in venture capital, joining Canaan right before the first dot-com bubble burst. Ibrahim says a lot of her fellow investors have only ever known tech as an "up and to the right" industry and she's concerned by the intense rate at which many companies are burning capital, even after they go public. She also talks about the recent backlash against men in tech who have sexually harassed women, calling Reid Hoffman's decency pledge "the lowest of low bars." The bigger challenge for women going forward, Ibrahim explains, will be helping other women succeed even though there is no obvious female equivalent in tech of Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg.

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New York University professor Scott Galloway returns to the podcast to talk with Recode’s Kara Swisher about his first book, “The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google,” which comes out on Oct. 3. Galloway predicts that Amazon will launch a weekly auto-delivery service called Prime Squared to encourage its highest-value customers to buy more, and forecasts that the company’s next logical acquisition after Whole Foods would be the luxury department-store chain Nordstrom. He also talks about why companies want to be seen as politically progressive today, why Airbnb will be worth more than Uber and why, if you boil Apple’s brand down to one word, it's “sex.”

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Chris Urmson, the CEO of Aurora and former CTO of self-driving cars at Google, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about when autonomous vehicles will replace human-driven ones. Urmson, who started working on the technology at Carnegie Mellon University in the mid-2000s, predicts we'll see fleets of self-driving cars on some roads within five years, but that they won't completely take over for at least 30 years. He talks about the remaining challenges to making these vehicles completely safe — including the danger of their operators becoming complacent about the technology — and how their arrival will impact everything from government to public transportation to fast-food jobs.

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Social Capital CEO Chamath Palihapitiya talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about the future of capitalism and investing, which he says will look less and less like traditional venture capital, as firms like his embed themselves at a deep operational level in their companies. Palihapitiya also discusses why investors delude themselves into believing their own bravado, what he thinks of James Damore's Google memo and why Silicon Valley needs to deal with more than just the "low-hanging fruit" of sexual harassment. He evaluates the biggest tech companies of today — including Twitter, Amazon and Facebook — and predicts that the new CEO of Uber will have one of the most important jobs in the country. 

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Recode’s Kara Swisher heads to Louisville, Ky., to talk about the future of work with a panel of local-minded techies: Interapt CEO Ankur Gopal, Code Louisville founder Rider Rodriguez, TechHire Eastern Kentucky student Crystal Adkins and Tech Jobs Tour CEO Leanne Pittsford. They talk about what inspired them to become entrepreneurial, and why existing tech companies and investors should be looking to historically less-techie places like Kentucky for workers and founders. Gopal emphasizes that people in the area are not looking for a handout, just looking for work, and Adkins explains why hiring for a coding job shouldn’t require a bachelor’s degree. Later in the show, the panel discusses what needs to happen to help entrepreneurial people across the country find their next move.

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Lyft Director of Product Taggart Matthiesen talks with Recode’s Johana Bhuiyan about the ride-hailing company’s push into self-driving cars. Matthiesen predicts that Lyft will slowly evolve into a hybrid transportation service, with users summoning rides as they do today and getting paired with either a human driver or an autonomous vehicle — whatever is faster. Lyft’s cars may never be 100 percent autonomous, he notes, and today’s drivers may become a sort of concierge, providing new experiences to riders while the car does the navigation. Matthiesen also talks about how the #DeleteUber campaign earlier this year helped Lyft and why the company can’t get complacent about its product.

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Chris Kuenne and John Danner talk with Recode's Kara Swisher about their new book, "Built for Growth: How Builder Personality Shapes Your Business, Your Team, and Your Ability to Win." Kuenne and Danner argue that, contrary to the conventional wisdom about business founders, winning entrepreneurs can come from many personality types, and those personalities shape the sort of company they build. They also talk about why Silicon Valley worships singular figures like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk above others and how to create more entrepreneurs among the "millions" of capable men and women across America.

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