Decoder with Nilay Patel
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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Prediction markets want to be the news
<p>Today let’s talk about prediction markets, which continue to insert themselves into the news cycle and the news in increasingly weird, unsettling, and potentially illegal ways. </p> <p>My guest today is Liz Lopatto, a senior reporter at The Verge who owns what we cheerfully call the chaos beat. Liz has been writing a lot about prediction markets lately and especially why they all seem so intent on being perceived as sources of news — a position which directly incentivizes insider trading. That in turn creates a long list of very predictable problems.</p> <p>Links:</p> Prediction markets want...
Zillow's CEO on growth during a housing crisis
<p>Today, I’m talking with Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman. Zillow is one of those apps that really exemplifies what you might call the smartphone era of software: the company built a great mobile app for looking at real estate listings, and it turned into not just entertainment for so many of us, but what has become a vertically-integrated platform for buying, selling, and renting real estate.</p> <p>Jeremy’s argument is that the future of Zillow looks a lot like an end-to-end business platform for real estate agents, and we spent a lot of time talking about whether a bu...
Inside Xbox's executive shakeup
<p>Today, we’re talking about the future of Xbox. Phil Spencer, a two-time Decoder guest who’s led Xbox for more than a decade, is stepping down. But in a shocking twist, his deputy long-assumed successor Sarah Bond is also out too, and the Xbox division is now in the hands of an Asha Sharma, one of Microsoft’s AI executives with no prior game industry experience.</p> <p>There is no better person to talk to about all of this than Tom Warren, senior editor here at The Verge and author of the excellent Notepad newsletter. Tom is actual...
Hank Green lets loose on YouTube, billionaires, and algorithms
<p>Today, I’m talking with Hank Green, a longtime friend of Decoder and the co-founder and now former owner of Complexly, an online education company he started with his brother John in 2012. I say former owner because Hank and John have just converted Complexly into a nonprofit and given up their ownership of the company in the process.</p> <p>That’s some of the purest Decoder bait that ever was, because it’s all about how you structure a company and how you make decisions about changing that structure. So of course I had to bring Hank back on to...
Money no longer matters to AI's top talent
<p>Today we're talking about the war for AI talent. Right now, the hottest job market on the planet is for AI researchers. And the vast majority of these people are concentrated into a small number of hugely valuable, extremely fast-growing companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, most of which are now paying some of the highest salaries in the history of tech to poach from one another.</p> <p>We’ve been dying to really dig in and try to unpack what's going on with all these talent moves in AI. So we brought on Verge senior AI re...
Let's talk about Ring, lost dogs, and the surveillance state
<p>Today, we're talking about the camera company Ring, lost dogs, and the surveillance state. Since it aired for a massive audience at the Super Bowl, Ring’s Search Party commercial has become a lightning rod for controversy. It’s easy to see how the same technology that can find lost dogs can be used to find people, and then used to invade our privacy in all kinds of uncomfortable ways, by cops and regular people alike. </p> <p>Although Ring has since canceled its partnership with controversial surveillance company Flock, the company is now facing hard questions about its plan...
The surprising case for AI judges
<p>My guest today is Bridget McCormack, former chief justice for the Michigan Supreme Court and now president and CEO of the American Arbitration Association. For the past several years, Bridget and her team have been developing an AI-assisted arbitration platform called the AI Arbitrator. </p> <p>So I sat down with her to talk about how the tool works, the pros and cons of automating parts of the arbitration process, and the bigger picture questions around institutional trust, justice, and the future of law. </p> <p><br></p> <p>Links: </p> All rise for JudgeGPT | The Verge Why do la...
Siemens CEO's mission to automate everything
<p>Siemens is one of those absolutely giant, extremely important, fairly opaque companies we love to dig into on Decoder. At a very basic, reductive level, Siemens makes the hardware and software that let other companies run and automate their stuff.</p> <p>We spent a lot of time talking about what happens to jobs when Siemens automates everything — and what happens to a company like Siemens when the free trade era we’re used to gets turned on its head.</p> <p>Read the full interview transcript on The Verge. </p> <p>Links: </p> Siemens Energy CEO attends Trump meeti...
Reality is losing the deepfake war
<p>Today, we’re going to talk about reality, and whether we can label photos and videos to protect our shared understanding of the world around us. To do this, I sat down with Verge reporter Jess Weatherbed, who covers creative tools for us — a space that’s been totally upended by generative AI. </p> <p>We’ve been talking about how the photos and videos taken by our phones are getting more and more processed for years on The Verge. Here in 2026, we’re in the middle of a full-on reality crisis, as fake and manipulated ultra-believable images and videos flo...
Docusign's CEO on the dangers of trusting AI to read, and write, your contracts
<p>Today, I’m talking with Allan Thygesen, who is the CEO of Docusign. You know Docusign, it’s the platform that lets you sign stuff online. It turns out 7,000 people work there, which is one of those facts floating around that’s always felt like perfect Decoder bait. What are all those people doing? And what kind of product roadmap does a company like Docusign even need?</p> <p>Alan has only been CEO of Docusign for three years, so he has some interesting perspective on where the company was, the changes he wanted to make, and where he thinks...
