730 episodes

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 Vox Media Podcast Network

    • Business
    • 4.1 • 2.9K Ratings

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.

    Figma CEO Dylan Field is optimistic about the future and AI

    Figma CEO Dylan Field is optimistic about the future and AI

    We’ve got a fun one today — I talked to Figma CEO Dylan Field in front of a live audience at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. And we got into it – we talked about everything from design, to software distribution, to the future of the web, and, of course, AI. 
    Figma is an fascinating company – the Figma design tool is used by designers at basically every company you can think of. And importantly, it runs on the web. It became such a big deal that Adobe tried to buy it out in 2022 for $20 billion dollars, a deal that only just recently fell through because of regulatory concerns. 
    So Dylan and I talked a lot about where Figma is now as an independent company, how Figma is structured, where it’s going, and how Dylan’s decisionmaking has changed since the last time he was on the show in 2022.

    Links:

    Why Figma is selling to Adobe for $20 billion, with CEO Dylan Field — Decoder


    Adobe abandons $20 billion acquisition of Figma — The Verge


    Adobe’s Dana Rao on AI, copyright, and the failed Figma deal — Decoder


    Figma’s CEO on life after the company’s failed sale to Adobe — Command Line


    Amazon restricts self-publishing due to AI concerns — The Guardian


    Wix’s new AI chatbot builds websites in seconds based on prompts — The Verge


    Apple is finally allowing full versions of Chrome and Firefox on the iPhone — The Verge


    What Is Solarpunk? A Guide to the Environmental Art Movement. — Built In



    Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23866201

    Credits: 
    Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
    Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. 
    The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    • 53 min
    Why Google Search feels like it’s gotten worse

    Why Google Search feels like it’s gotten worse

    If you’ve been listening to Decoder or the Vergecast for a while, you know that I am obsessed with Google Search, the web, and how both of those things might change in the age of AI. But to really understand how something might change, you have to step back and understand what it is right now. 

    So today I’m talking with Verge platforms reporter Mia Sato about Google Search, the industries it’s created, and more importantly, how relentless search engine optimization, or SEO, has utterly changed the web in its image. Mia and I really dug into this to explain why search results are so terrible now, what Google is trying to do about it, and why this is such an important issue for the future of the internet.

    Links: 

    How Google is killing independent sites like ours — HouseFresh


    How Google perfected the web — The Verge


    The people who ruined the internet — The Verge


    A storefront for robots — The Verge


    The end of the Googleverse — The Verge


    The unsettling scourge of obituary spam — The Verge


    What happens when Google Search doesn’t have the answers? — The Verge


    The AI takeover of Google Search starts now — The Verge


    AI is killing the old web, and the new web struggles to be born — The Verge


    Google is starting to squash more spam and AI in search results — The Verge


    Ethics Statement — The Verge



    Credits: 
    Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
    Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. 
    The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    • 39 min
    How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka

    How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka

    Today, I’m talking to Kyle Chayka, a staff writer for The New Yorker, a regular contributor to The Verge, and author of the new book Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture. Kyle has been writing for years now about how the culture of big social media platforms bleeds into real life, first affecting how things look, and now shaping how and what culture is created and the mechanisms by which that culture spreads all around the world. 

    If you’ve been listening to Decoder, this is all going to sound very familiar. The core thesis of Kyle’s book — that algorithmic recommendations make everything feel the same — hits at an idea that we’ve talked about countless times on the show: that how content is distributed shapes what content is made. So I was really excited to sit down with Kyle and dig into Filterworld and his thoughts on how this happened and what we might be able to do about it.

    Links: 

    Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture — Kyle Chayka


    Welcome to AirSpace — The Verge


    The Stanley water bottle craze, explained — Vox


    TikTok and the vibes revival — The New Yorker


    Why the internet isn’t fun anymore — The New Yorker


    The age of algorithmic anxiety — The New Yorker


    Lo-fi beats to quarantine to are booming on YouTube — The Verge


    Taylor Swift has encouraged her fans' numerology habit yet again — AV Club


    How fandom built the internet as we know it, with Kaitlyn Tiffany — Decoder



    Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23858379

    Credits: 
    Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
    Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright.
    The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    • 1 hr 7 min
    Why people are falling in love with AI chatbots

    Why people are falling in love with AI chatbots

    Our Thursday episodes are all about big topics in the news, and this week we’re wrapping up our short series on one of the biggest topics of all: generative AI. In our last couple episodes, we talked a lot about some of the biggest, most complicated legal and policy questions surrounding the modern AI industry, including copyright lawsuits and deepfake legislation. But we wanted to end on a more personal note: How is this technology making people feel, and in particular how is it affecting how people communicate and connect?
    Verge reporter Miya David has covered AI chatbots — specifically AI romance bots — quite a bit, so we invited her onto the show to talk about how generative AI is finding its way into dating. We not only discussed how this technology is affecting dating apps and human relationships, but also how the boom in AI chatbot sophistication is laying the groundwork for a generation of people who might form meaningful relationships with so-called AI companions.

    Links: 

    Speak, Memory — The Verge


    A conversation with Bing’s chatbot left me deeply unsettled — NYT


    Google suspends engineer who claims its AI is sentient — The Verge


    The law of AI girlfriends — The Verge


    Replika’s new AI therapy app tries to bring you to a zen island — The Verge


    Replika’s new AI app is like Tinder but with sexy chatbots — Gizmodo


    Don’t date robots; their privacy policies are terrible — The Verge


    AI is shaking up online dating with chatbots that are ‘flirty but not too flirty’ — CNBC


    Loneliness and suicide mitigation for students using GPT3-enabled chatbots — Nature


    Virtual valentine: People are turning to AI in search of emotional connections — CBS



    Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23856679


    Credits: 

    Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
    Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright.
    The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    • 40 min
    Guest host Hank Green makes Nilay Patel explain why websites have a future

    Guest host Hank Green makes Nilay Patel explain why websites have a future

    On this special episode of Decoder, science educator and YouTuber Hank Green is guest hosting. And the guest? It’s Nilay Patel, who sat down with Hank to discuss building The Verge, the state of media, and the future of the web. Also: whether the fediverse is worth investing in, and how social platforms’ control of distribution has shaped the internet.

    In the words of Hank: “Nilay has got some weird ideas about the internet. For example, that he’s going to revolutionize the media through blog posts. He keeps saying it, but what the hell does he mean? While I was busy building my business on other people’s platforms, Nilay has built something very rare in the year 2024: a website that publishes content and isn’t behind a paywall yet still makes money. How does he do it? How does he make decisions? How is The Verge structured? The tables have turned.”


    Links:

    Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok — Decoder


    Platformer’s Casey Newton on surviving the great media collapse and what comes next — Decoder


    Just buy this Brother laser printer everyone has, it’s fine — The Verge


    Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers — Futurism


    The fediverse, explained — The Verge


    Can ActivityPub save the internet? — The Verge



    Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23851875

    The Vergecast and Decoder are live at SXSW this weekend, March 8th and 9th. SXSW attendees can see both shows live on the official Vox Media Podcast Stage at the JW Marriott, presented by Atlassian. Learn more at voxmedia.com/live.

    Credits:
    Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
    Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright.
    The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. 
    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    • 1 hr 3 min
    AI deepfakes are cheap, easy, and coming for the 2024 election

    AI deepfakes are cheap, easy, and coming for the 2024 election

    Our new Thursday episodes of Decoder are all about deep dives into big topics in the news, and this week we’re continuing our mini-series on one of the biggest topics of all: generative AI. Last week, we took a look at the wave of copyright lawsuits that might eventually grind this whole industry to a halt. Those are basically a coin flip — and the outcomes are off in the distance, as those cases wind their way through the legal system. 

    A bigger problem right now is that AI systems are really good at making just believable enough fake images and audio — and with tools like OpenAI’s new Sora, maybe video soon, too. And of course, it’s once again a presidential election year here in the US. So today, Verge policy editor Adi Robertson joins the show to discuss how AI might supercharge disinformation and lies in an election that’s already as contentious as any in our lifetimes — and what might be done about it.


    Links: 


    How the Mueller report indicts social networks

    Twitter permanently bans Trump

    Meta allows Trump back on Facebook and Instagram

    No Fakes Act wants to protect actors and singers from unauthorized AI replicas

    White House calls for legislation to stop Taylor Swift AI fakes

    Watermarks aren’t the silver bullet for AI misinformation

    AI Drake just set an impossible legal trap for Google

    Barack Obama on AI, free speech, and the future of the internet




    Credits:

    Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
    Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright.
    The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.


    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    • 41 min

Customer Reviews

4.1 out of 5
2.9K Ratings

2.9K Ratings

chrispauley ,

Nilay is a great interviewer

Nilay has been incredibly thoughtful in his structure for interviews. The “decoder questions” always come but there’s so much more to each discussion. He is not hesitant to push on guests when needed. He is also able to communicate concepts that I’m not sure I would otherwise care about or maybe not understand why they’re important.

JayAtFlight ,

Second episode > normal episode

The second episodes are fantastic! I love listening to Nilay just explain things. Love it.

hybridarjun ,

Rock and Roll

Paul

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