We’re back to start the year with a very special live interview with Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan, which we taped in front of a terrific audience at Brooklyn Bowl in Las Vegas during CES. At this year’s show, Razer made headlines for something it calls Project Ava, an AI companion that has a physical presence in the real world, as an anime hologram that sits in a jar on your desk. It’s powered by, you guessed it, Elon Musk’s Grok. 

There are a whole lot of choices bundled up in all of that, as well as Razer’s decision to go all-in on AI at a moment when the gaming community is outright rejecting it. So Min and I really got into it. I think you’ll have a lot to think about with this one. 

Links: 

• Razer is making an AI anime waifu hologram for your desk | The Verge
• Razer thinks you’d rather have AI headphones instead of glasses | The Verge
• Baldur’s Gate 3 studio says it won’t use AI for concept art or writing | The Verge
• In 2025, AI became a lightning rod for gamers and devs | The Verge
• Razer plans $600M push to capture 'untapped' AI gaming demand | Bloomberg
• Replika CEO says it’s okay if we end up marrying AI chatbots | Decoder
• Lawsuits blame ChatGPT for suicides and harmful delusions | NYT
• Inside three longterm relationships with AI chatbots | NYT
• Torment Nexus | Know Your Meme
• The future of gaming is AI | Razer (Instagram)

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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

Hey everyone, it’s Nilay. We’re settling back in here after the winter break and CES, and we’ll have new episodes for you starting next Monday. In the meantime, we wanted to highlight one of our favorites from last year: an interview with journalist and author Megan Greenwell about her book Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream.

My conversation with Megan last year was extremely illuminating as to why private equity does what it does to industries like healthcare, media and real estate — and just how deeply it's affecting the everyday lives of Americans everywhere. It's a really great conversation that feels just as timely today as it did last summer. Enjoy. 

Links: 

• Bad Company | HarperCollins
• How private equity kills companies and communities | Decoder
• Private equity bought out your doctor and bankrupted Toys ‘R’ Us | Decoder
• Private equity makes its first college sports play | Axios
• Private equity Is gutting America — and getting away with it | NYT
• I was fired from Deadspin for refusing to ‘stick to sports’ | NYT
• Will private equity be the next ‘Big Short’? | Marketplace
• The profit-obsessed monster destroying American ERs | Vox
• Why your vet bill is so high | The Atlantic
• The investment firms leave behind a barren wasteland’ | Politico

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

We’ve got something special for you today. It’s my friend Hank Green, longtime YouTuber, science educator, and viral TikTok star, interviewing Dropout CEO Sam Reich. 

Hank did this episode as a guest host over the summer, and it’s a fan favorite, bringing together two internet personalities that’ve known each other for a very long time and who have a lot of inside knowledge about how the internet, Hollywood, and entertainment all intertwine.

Links: 

• Dropout’s Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping the internet weird | Decoder
• How Dropout broke through in 2025 | AV Club
• Dropout CEO on launching ‘Superfan’ tier, crossing 1M subscribers | Variety
• How CollegeHumor reinvented itself for the new internet age | People
• CollegeHumor shaped online comedy. What went wrong? [2020] | Wired
• ‘I believe in this enough to try to do it myself’ [2020] | Digiday
• Jacob Wysocki needed a minute to process that Game Changer | Vulture
• Game Changer smartly weaponizes its online following | Mashable
• Vimeo CEO Philip Moyer is betting on the human touch | Decoder
• Vimeo to be acquired by Bending Spoons for $1.38B | 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

Hey everyone, it’s Nilay. Decoder is on our holiday break. We’ve got a lot of fun stuff coming up in the New Year, though, including a special Decoder Live at CES. Stay tuned for more details, including how to RSVP for free tickets.

In the meantime, we’ve got a great episode of the podcast Channels, featuring two of the best media reporters in the business. Host Peter Kafka sat down with Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw to talk about the bidding war between Paramount SkyDance and Netflix over Warner Bros. Discovery. It’s the biggest story in entertainment right now, and this episode breaks down everything you need to know about the contentious acquisition. 

Links: 

• "Neither Side Is Used to Losing”: Lucas Shaw on the battle for Warner Bros. | Channels
• Five things we’re getting wrong about Warner Bros.′ Netflix deal | Bloomberg
• Warner Bros.’ bidders brace for a fight that will last months | Bloomberg
• WBD wants its shareholders to reject Paramount’s latest offer | The Verge
• There are no good outcomes for the Warner Bros. sale | The Verge
• Netflix is “100% committed” to releasing WB films in theaters | The Verge
• Netflix is buying Warner Bros. for $83 billion | 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

Hey everyone! Decoder senior producers Kate Cox and Nick Statt here. We’ve had a big year, including nearly 100 episodes, a new YouTube channel, an ad-free podcast feed, and a slate of great guest hosts while Nilay was on parental leave. It’s been a lot!

We’ve also had a lot of great questions and comments this year from you, our audience. So we pulled together all the feedback we’ve received on topics like CarPlay, Monday episode guest suggestions, and — of course — AI. And then we turned the tables on Nilay to ask him his thoughts on the past 12 months: What we liked, what we want to improve, and how he’s making decisions for Decoder in the new year. 

Links: 

• Answering your biggest Decoder questions, 2024 edition | Decoder
• The DoorDash Problem | Decoder
• How decision making changes when AI answers are cheap and (too) easy | Decoder
• Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay | Decoder
• Rivian CEO: ‘We’re really convicted’ about skipping CarPlay | Decoder
• How SharkNinja took over the home, with CEO Mark Barrocas | Decoder
• Why Tubi CEO Anjali Sud thinks free TV can win again | Decoder
• Disney accuses Google of copyright infringement following OpenAI deal | 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

Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar was last on the show in 2022 — just one month before ChatGPT launched and upended literally everything for Stack Overflow in a deeply existential way. 

He called a company emergency, reallocated about 10 percent of the staff to figure out solutions to the ChatGPT problem, and made some pretty huge decisions about structure and organization to navigate that change — all of it pure Decoder bait.

Links: 

• 2025 Developer Survey | Stack Overflow
• The people who make your apps go to Stack Overflow for answers | Decoder
• OpenAI, Stack Overflow partner to bring technical knowledge to ChatGPT | The Verge
• Stack Overflow feeds programmers’ answers to AI whether they like it or not | The Verge
• Stack Overflow cuts 28 percent of its staff | TechCrunch
• AI-generated answers temporarily banned on Stack Overflow | The Verge
• Stack Overflow’s strike is over, but problems persist | Jon Ericson
• A new era of Stack Overflow | Stack Overflow

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

Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey and I agree it seems like democracy is on the line right now, especially around the First Amendment and the increasing pressure the Trump administration — especially FCC chair Brendan Carr — is putting on free speech. I also had a lot of questions for Sen. Markey about the supposed TikTok ban, which no one seems to know anything about, and all the other problems we’re facing in 2025.

Links: 

• Even the lawmakers behind the TikTok ban have no idea what’s going on | The Verge
• Carr’s FCC is an anti-consumer, rights-trampling harassment machine | The Verge
• The FCC is a weapon in Trump’s war on free speech | Decoder
• Here’s the Trump EO that would ban state AI laws | The Verge
• Silicon Valley is rallying behind a guy who sucks | The Verge
• Silicon Valley’s man in the White House is benefiting himself and his friends | The 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

Today, I’m talking with Willem Avé, who’s the head of product at Square. You know Square — it was started by billionaire Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame more than 15 years ago, and it got big on the back of that little magnetic reader that once plugged into the headphone jack of the iPhone and let small businesses accept credit cards.

Nowadays, of course, Square is more than a credit card reader, and sadly, the headphone jack is ancient history. The company itself is now part of parent organization called Block, which is made up of a very interesting mix of financial services like Afterpay, Cash App, and, yes, the streaming music service Tidal. So Willem and I really got into where Square is headed next with AI and automation, why he’s excited about crypto and Bitcoin specifically, and even what it means that the US is discontinuing the penny. 

Links: 

• Square’s public roadmap | Square
• Jack Dorsey is reorganizing the entirety of Block | Fortune
• How Block turned Square into a financial services giant | Fast Company
• Block to roll out bitcoin payments on Square | Square
• Square buys $170 million worth of bitcoin | CNBC
• Square, Jack Dorsey’s payments company, changes its name to Block | NYT
• The penny dies at 232 | NYT

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

Today, I’m talking with Verge senior AI reporter Hayden Field about some of the people responsible for studying AI and deciding in what ways it might… well, ruin the world. Those folks work at Anthropic as part of a group called the societal impacts team, which Hayden just spent time with for a profile she published this week on The Verge. 

The team is just nine people out of more than 2,000 who work at Anthropic, and their only job, as the team members themselves say, is to investigate and publish quote "inconvenient truths” about AI. That of course brings up a whole host of problems, the most important of which is whether this team can remain independent, or even exist at all, as it publicizes findings about Anthropic's own products that might be unflattering or even politically fraught. 

Links: 

• It’s their job to keep AI from destroying everything | The Verge
• Anthropic details how it measures Claude’s wokeness | The Verge
• White House orders tech companies to make AI bigoted again | The Verge
• Chaos and lies: Why Sam Altman was booted from OpenAI | The Verge
• How Elon Musk Is remaking Grok in his image | NYT
• Anthropic tries to defuse White House backlash | Axios 
• New AI battle: White House vs. Anthropic | Axios
• Anthropic will pursue gulf state investments after all | Wired

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

IBM was instrumental to the entire 20th century of computing — but it's a lot harder for most of us to see what it's been up to during this century. That's because it's fully an enterprise company, and CEO Arvind Krishna says that business is booming.

But there’s a huge change coming to that business as well, as Watson-style deep learning has given way to LLMs and generative AI. Sure, Arvind says IBM got there a little too early. But he doesn’t seem concerned that IBM would be stuck on the sidelines. 

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links: 

• Computer wins on ‘Jeopardy!’: Trivial, it’s not | New York Times (2011)
• What Ever Happened to IBM’s Watson? | New York Times (2021)
• America Forgot About IBM Watson. Is ChatGPT Next? | The Atlantic
• IBM acquires Red Hat | The Verge
• IBM and Groq Partner to Accelerate Enterprise AI Deployment | IBM
• IBM’s Jerry Chow on the future of quantum computing | Decoder
• IBM: quantum computing partnership with AMD is bearing fruit | 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.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is 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

Hey everyone, it's Nilay. It’s been great being back in the Decoder chair this fall, and we’ve got a bunch of great episodes coming up to round out the year. But the production team is off this week for the holiday, so today, we’re going to share this episode of The Gray Area with you.

This time, host Sean Illing is talking to data scientist Hannah Ritchie — about climate science and how although the crisis is definitely real, it’s not all bad news. There are actually a lot of great indicators out there in the data that show real progress in limiting emissions and boosting clean energy. It’s a nuanced, hopeful take at a time when, admittedly, it kind of feels like all the news about everything is pretty doom and gloom.

Links:

• We can have growth while fighting climate change | Vox
• The Grey Area | Apple Podcasts
• Clearing the Air | Hannah Ritchie

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.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

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