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The Verge

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.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

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 questions and responding to feedback, criticism, and suggestions. 

We talk through some recent controversial episodes like our interviews with the CEOs of Superhuman and Puck, and we also discuss how we’re covering AI, thinking about the future of the show, and what it takes to win (and lose) Decoder. 

Links: 

 Nilay answers your burning Decoder questions | Decoder Mailbag (2025) 

 Answering your biggest Decoder questions | Decoder Mailbag (2024)

 Confronting the CEO of the AI company that impersonated me | Decoder

 Can Puck reinvent the news business for the influencer age? | Decoder

 The people do not yearn for automation | Decoder

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How to win — or lose — Decoder

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 standardize fire and safety testing as electricity was the new technology spreading into homes.

But now it's everywhere, and "safety" in tech doesn't just mean the hardware. UL is adapting quickly to the connected, AI-powered era... but do the companies making and distributing tech even care about standards anymore?

Links: 

 
How fake UL certifications led to Chinese ebike suit | Electrek

 
FCC IoT program loses UL after China probe | Cybersecurity Dive

 
FCC’s Carr probes IoT program lab over “ties to China” | PC Mag

 
The US router ban, explained | The Verge

 
More than 500,000 hoverboards recalled (2016) | The Verge

 
Brendan Carr is a dummy | The Vergecast

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. This episode was edited by Kabir Chopra. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks

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 particular way of seeing the world that fits everything into algorithms, databases and loops. 

Software brain is powerful stuff. It's a way of thinking that basically created our modern world. But software thinking has also been turbocharged by AI in a way that I think helps explain the enormous gap between how excited the tech industry is about the technology and how regular people are growing to dislike it more and more over time.

Links: 

 Why software Is eating the world | Marc Andreessen

 Gen Z’s love-hate relationship with AI | The Verge

 The attacks on Sam Altman are a warning for the AI world | The Verge

 Silicon Valley has forgotten what normal people want | The Verge

 I saw something new in San Francisco | The New York Times

 Anthropic CEO issues dire warning about white-collar work | The Street

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

THE PEOPLE DO NOT YEARN FOR AUTOMATION

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 tools to an AI platform with design tools."

But there's a lot of competition in that AI enterprise space. Not only is Canva competing with design software like the Adobe Creative Suite, but also it's competing with AI companies, like Anthropic and Meta, that are launching their own AI design platforms. So we talked a lot about whether Canva really is the right platform to bring the whole workspace together.

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links: 

 Canva AI 2.0 goes all in on prompt-powered design tools | The Verge

 The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe | The Verge

 Anthropic launches Claude Design | TechCrunch

 Canva is now in the coding and spreadsheet business | The Verge

 Melanie Perkins thinks the world needs more alternatives to Adobe | Decoder (2024)

⁠Subscribe to The Verge⁠ to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Canva's CEO on its big pivot to AI enterprise software

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 published an incredible deep-dive feature in The New Yorker about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, his trustworthiness, and the rise of OpenAI itself. So Ronan came on the show to discuss the piece, his reporting process, and why he thinks this story and the revelations it contains really matter. 

Read the full interview transcript here on The Verge.

Links: 

 Sam Altman may control our future — can he be trusted? | The New Yorker

 Hey ChatGPT, which one of these is the real Sam Altman? | New York Times

 Suspect throws molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s home | Wired

 The attacks on Sam Altman are a warning for the AI world | The Verge

 The vibes are off at OpenAI | The Verge

 Why Sam Altman was booted from OpenAI | The Verge

 Sam Altman, unconstrained by the truth | Gary Marcus

 A brief history of Sam Altman's hype | MIT Tech Review

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ronan Farrow on Sam Altman's "unconstrained" relationship with the truth

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 in their industries, and those reporters get equity in Puck and a share of the company's revenue.

It's a place where the financial incentives of the influencer economy crash right into the rigors of traditional journalism — and as regular Decoder listeners know, I have a lot of questions about how those two things work (or don't) in the modern media landscape. 

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge. 

Links: 

 Puck buys Air Mail in deal valued at $16M | The Wrap

 The man yelling ‘iceberg’ on the Hollywood Titanic | New York Times

 Sarah Personette joins news startup Puck as CEO | Variety

 Are we past peak newsletter? | New York Times

 Two new newsletters bet they’ve got Hollywood covered | LA Times

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Can Puck’s CEO reinvent the news business for the influencer age?

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, who’s our senior AI reporter here at The Verge. She’s been keeping close tabs on both Anthropic and OpenAI, and how these two companies, both slate to go public this year, tell us a whole lot about the AI industry in 2026. 

Links: 

 The vibes are off at OpenAI | The Verge

 Anthropic essentially bans OpenClaw from Claude | The Verge

 Why OpenAI killed Sora | The Verge

 OpenAI just bought TBPN | The Verge

 National poll shows voters like AI less than ICE | The Verge

 The spiraling cost of making AI | WSJ

 OpenAI’s Fidji Simo taking leave amid exec shake-up | Wired

 OpenAI raises another $122B at $850B valuation | The Verge

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The AI industry's existential race for profits

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 actual routers and switches and silicon — and the software to make those things work — there’s no internet, no cloud, and no AI. 

But a data center is a really unpleasant neighbor to have, and there’s robust opposition to new data center builds all over the country. So I had to start by asking what feels, strangely, like one of the most urgent questions of the moment: Should we build data centers in space?

Links: 

 Nvidia launches space computing, rocketing AI Into orbit | Nvidia

 Nvidia’s AI dominance expands to networking | CRN

 Amid rising pushback, 2025 data center cancellations surge | Heatmap

 Billionaires want data centers everywhere, including space | The Verge

 How Ciena keeps the internet online | Decoder

 Okta’s CEO is betting big on agent identity | Decoder

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins wants data centers in space

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.

These are complicated cases with some huge repercussions for both how these platforms work and the very nature of speech in America. So we’ve brought on two heavy hitters: my friend Casey Newton, founder and editor of Platformer and co-host of Hard Fork, as well as Verge senior policy reporter Lauren Feiner, who’s been covering these trials since the beginning. 

Links: 

 Meta & YouTube found negligent in social media addiction trial | The Verge

 Meta misled users about its products’ safety, jury decides | The Verge

 Meta’s legal defeat: a victory for kids, or a loss for everyone | The Verge

 Can you have child safety and Section 230, too? | Platformer

 The terrible cost of infinite scroll | The New York Times

 I watched grieving parents stare down Zuckerberg in court | The Verge

 Section 230 turns 30 as it faces its biggest tests yet | The Verge

 Congress considers blowing up internet law | The Verge

 Sen. Rob Wyden: “Why the internet still needs Section 230” | The Verge

 How America turned against the First Amendment | The Verge

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A jury says Meta and Google hurt a kid. What now?

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 at work.

SaaS companies like Okta are under a lot of pressure in the age of AI, which Todd even said on an earnings call he's "paranoid" about. But you'll also hear Todd say that for Okta specifically, there's also a world of opportunity as the very concept of a digital "identity" has to expand into things that aren't really people. 

Links: 

 CEO ‘paranoid’ as vibe coders stir SaaSpocalypse fears | The Register

 $300B evaporated. The SaaSpocalypse has begun | Forbes

 How AI assistants are moving the security goalposts | Krebs on Security

 What everyone’s missing about AI and development | CRN

 Agents run amok: Identity lessons from Moltbook’s experiment | Okta

 Breakup of IBM is Antitrust goal (1972) | New York Times

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks

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