Kate Cox
Appearances
Decoder with Nilay Patel
The AI election deepfakes have arrived
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Decoder with Nilay Patel
The AI election deepfakes have arrived
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Decoder with Nilay Patel
The AI election deepfakes have arrived
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Decoder with Nilay Patel
The AI election deepfakes have arrived
It can be the magnetic hub fit to inspire your team's best ideas. Visit therefinery.nyc for a tour.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Intuit asked us to delete part of this Decoder episode
Support for this episode comes from AWS. AWS Generative AI gives you the tools to power your business forward with the security and speed of the world's most experienced cloud.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Intuit asked us to delete part of this Decoder episode
Support for this episode comes from AWS. With the power of AWS Generative AI, teams can get relevant, fast answers to pressing questions and use data to drive real results. Power your business and generate real impact with the most experienced cloud.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Intuit asked us to delete part of this Decoder episode
Support for this episode comes from AWS. AWS Generative AI gives you the tools to power your business forward with the security and speed of the world's most experienced cloud.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
Speaking of Blue Sky, that's where this next question came from. And I'm already laughing. It's from Caridot Peters, who writes, there's too much talk about podcasts as the primary source of information as news. And I get why. No or fewer paywalls. Do you see any alternative? Do you, Neil, I still believe in websites. Oh my God.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
Also, with so many newsletters in addition to news sites, could an RSS-type solution be in the future?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
So aren't we still the last website on Earth? That's the verge, right?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
A lot, a lot, a lot of listeners wrote in about our interview this fall with Intuit CEO Sasan Godarzi. One example is from Jamal Khan, who wrote, "...I appreciated the tax reform questions you asked the Intuit CEO in your recent interview. They were fair, and it would have been a glaring omission if you hadn't brought it up. However, early episodes of the podcast were missing that edge."
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
He adds, that's why I think now is a good time to revisit some of those early interviews. Back then, it felt like you were inviting guests because you thought their companies were doing something cool and you wanted to share that with your audience. Some of those companies failed spectacularly in realizing the vision they sold us.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
And so the question is, can we go back to some of our guests from the first year or two of the show and ask them newer, harder questions? Jamal specifically called out UiPath CEO Daniel Dines as someone he wants to hear from again.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
It was the most unhinged professional comms email I have gotten since I became a full-time journalist in 2012. And like, I spent the first half of my career at Consumerist ticking off companies every week.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
Our work from home episode this fall also generated a lot of feedback from listeners. I think it was probably tied with Intuit, actually, for the most feedback we got this year. One email from a listener named Rohit Kabra really captured the sentiment.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
He wrote, currently, I'm the founder of a growing startup and the work from home versus return to office debate is one I have frequently with other founders. He wrote that he favors a hybrid approach for his team and was excited to hear our take on it. But then he didn't like our take on it. He said our perspective felt a bit narrow and even dismissive by focusing primarily on a subset of society.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
And he listed his concerns about the impact on interns and new workers who don't learn how to be in a workplace very well without one. He wrote about leadership quality, which is that maybe poor managers just really do do better with people in the office and you can't expect every manager to be great.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
He wrote about cities and office culture, mental health, isolation, and the growing divide between knowledge sector work you can do with a laptop from anywhere and every other kind of job in the world that requires you to be hands-on. And the questions from this are, where do you fall on the remote versus in-office debate? And how does the decoder team operate?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
A huge number of the CEOs we talk to are in California or Europe. Nilay is based in New York City. I'm based in D.C. And yeah, we could not go to New York or Europe or San Francisco for every week we talk to all these people.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
We have to take a short break. We'll be right back.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
because our interview with Rabbit CEO Jesse Liu also generated listener feedback. First time listener John wrote in to say he tried the Rabbit R1 episode and was not sure what to make the most of. He said the back and forth about scraping data and getting blocked by big companies was fascinating.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
He said they're doing something super brittle, so it was really satisfying seeing the interview drill down on that. He adds that by the end, he had been won over to the CEO's way of thinking a little bit. They could still be crushed at any time. And he went on with basically the question, where do you think Rabbit goes from here?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
Is this kind of thing going to fade away or are we just way too early for AI hardware?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
So speaking of 2025, we here at Decoder are already very deep into planning our 2025 out. Since I am the person who has to be in charge of logistics, I can say we have booked interviews through almost the end of March already, and it's not quite Christmas. We can't talk about most of those guests yet for a lot of good reasons, but we have some big ambitions.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
Nilay, who do you think we should try to get on Decoder in 2025?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
All right. I think that's about it.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
I'm really interested in exploring the topic of what the introduction of generative AI has done to education. I have two kids. One is in middle school. One is in first grade. And they are glued to their iPads at all times. And I am trying to teach them what search is. And it's real complicated. And so I'm hoping we can get some teachers on to talk about what the deal is for them.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
That ties into another technical and money and systems question that our readers ask a lot, which is why don't we have chapter breaks?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
Hello, and welcome to a very special episode of Decoder. I'm Kate Cox, senior producer at The Verge, and while Decoder is Nila's show about big ideas, making it all work is my problem. I'm here today with my co-producer, Nick.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
And we are here with Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, who is host of Decoder and also our boss. Hi, Nilay. I love being the guest.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
Listener named Brian wrote in about our April episode where we talked to Verge reporter Liz Lopato about the rise and fall of Vice Media, which is honestly very fun. I love any time we can talk to Liz. Brian wrote, the conversation about funding sources and problems at Vice got me thinking, how can we as readers and listeners best support what you do at the Verge?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
We're here today to talk about some reader feedback because it's our end of year show. It's our last show for 2024. And we are very excited about all the things we've heard from you this year. We have had a really busy year. We interviewed a lot of people. We published more shows this year than in any past year, thanks to our second episode that we launched back in February.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
We've also had some listeners write in asking about ways to get around the paywall, not to, you know, stiff us, but for students or academic purposes like gift links or organizational memberships. Milton, who is a professor of digital marketing at University of Wisconsin at Madison said, asked us, how do I buy more?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
I'd love to figure out a way to give my students easy access to articles so they don't encounter the paywall. I'd be willing to help offset the cost of individual articles I leverage. For example, could we partner together on an affiliate link approach? I'd also turn it into a meta assignment for them to learn more about affiliate marketing and the disruption in the creator and content economy.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
Could we let this professor buy more Verge?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
We have to take a quick break. We'll be back in just a minute.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Answering your biggest Decoder questions
It's been a lot of work and a lot of fun. So we wanted to take a second to look back on some of our favorite themes, address your most common feedback and talk a bit about what's next.