How to win — and lose — Decoder
How to win — and lose — Decoder

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.  Hello and welcome to Decoder, Nilay’s show about big ideas and other problems. This is Nick Statt, senior producer, and I’m joined by host and very occasional guest, Nilay Patel. Nilay, welcome back to your own show. Hello. I hate being the guest. Now, you […]

Musk and Altman go to court
Musk and Altman go to court

The trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI is officially upon us. And it is going to be a mess. As the two sides fight over the early days of AI, who deserves credit and cash for what, and more, we’re likely to spend the next few weeks hearing a lot of important people’s secrets made […]

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

Today, I’m talking with Jennifer Scanlon, who is the CEO of UL Solutions. That’s Underwriters Laboratories – you know, the UL logo listed on all your electronics? That symbol means it’s been tested and found safe in a variety of ways. UL’s been around for 100 years. It started as a way for insurance companies […]

AirPods, Touch Bars, and the rest of Tim Cook’s legacy
AirPods, Touch Bars, and the rest of Tim Cook’s legacy

We knew at some point Tim Cook would step down from his position as Apple’s CEO. Over the last year, it has become increasingly obvious that John Ternus was his likely successor. The news this week was still a surprise, though – and this year’s succession could lead to some important changes at the most […]

THE PEOPLE DO NOT YEARN FOR AUTOMATION
THE PEOPLE DO NOT YEARN FOR AUTOMATION

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 […]

The Vergecast Vergecast, 2026 edition
The Vergecast Vergecast, 2026 edition

We get a lot of questions about how The Verge works. And how The Vergecast works. And how we make money. And whether some of that money helps Nilay buy more jackets, several yachts, or something else entirely. So, every once in a while, we spend an episode of the podcast answering as many questions […]

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

Today, I’m talking with Melanie Perkins, founder and CEO of Canva, a popular online design tool. I always enjoy talking with Melanie. She was last on the show a couple of years ago, just as the AI revolution was coming to the worlds of art and design. At the time, Canva had escaped a lot […]

The ‘AI is inevitable’ trap
The ‘AI is inevitable’ trap

In the latest sign of AI silly season, Allbirds, the shoe company, told the world it was now an AI company and briefly managed to septuple its stock price. The Newbird AI story is really just one of a bunch of things this week that made us wonder: have we reached the peak of AI, […]

Ronan Farrow on Sam Altman’s ‘unconstrained’ relationship with the truth
Ronan Farrow on Sam Altman’s ‘unconstrained’ relationship with the truth

Today on Decoder, 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. And 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 […]

Ben McKenzie vs. crypto
Ben McKenzie vs. crypto

A few years ago, during the absolute peak of the cryptocurrency craze, a somewhat surprising skeptic emerged. Most people know Ben McKenzie from his acting work on Southland or Gotham, or would recognize him instantly as Ryan Atwood from The O.C. While seemingly everyone else was buying Bitcoin, McKenzie decided to figure out what Bitcoin […]