Hey everyone, Nilay here. You might remember I took a break from Decoder last year — we had a baby, so I took some leave. In my place, we had an excellent slate of guest hosts, and we’ve been working hard to bring you those episodes in full video since we launched our official Decoder YouTube channel.

So today, we’re featuring a really great interview conducted by my very good friend Joanna Stern, now the founder and CEO of New Things, and Ford CEO Jim Farley. Joanna pulled some exclusive news out of Jim at the time, including some telling quotes on Trump’s tariff policy, on Ford competing with Chinese EVs, and the company's stance on Apple CarPlay. 

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links: 

• Ford CEO Jim Farley on China, tariffs, and the quest for a $30,000 EV | Decoder
• Joanna Stern is not a robot, but she lived with them | Decoder
• Ford's Jim Farley: 'I totally would’ve done it differently.’ | The Verge
• Ford pulls the plug on the all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck | NPR
• Inside the lab where Ford is trying to crack the code on cheap EVs | The Verge
• Ford is fighting against physics to build affordable EVs | The Verge
• Ford reveals breakthrough process for lower priced EVs | The Verge
• Ford CEO Jim Farley on building the electric F-150 | Decoder (2021)

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.

The show is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. The video version of this episode was edited by Kabir Chopra. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

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A lot has changed on the internet, in the creator landscape, and at Patreon itself since CEO Jack Conte was last on the show in 2021. AI and platform shifts have stolen creator content and decimated artists' reach and revenue streams, and Patreon has made some pretty existential changes to the way it works in response. 

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links: 

• My thoughts on AI | Patreon
• I tried to prove I’m not AI | Howtown
• Patreon: Apple’s 30% tax is the price of staying in the App Store | The Verge
• Welcome to hell, Elon (2022) | The Verge
• Reality is losing the deepfake war | Decoder
• Elon Musk is steamrolling Wall Street to become a trillionaire | Decoder
• Incorruptible | Simon & Schuster

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. This episode was edited by Xander Adams. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

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

My guest today is Hayden Field, senior AI reporter for The Verge. Often when Hayden comes on the show, it’s because something has gone wrong in the world of AI. Last weekend, that something was a pretty intense mix of Anthropic, the Trump administration, and Anthropic’s new AI model, Fable 5. 

Hayden actually just published a fantastic play-by-play on The Verge about how the Fable ban went down, and the scramble through the weekend from both sides to figure out what exactly happened and how it might get resolved. So I wanted her to come on and just walk me through the timeline and what it all means.

Read the ⁠full interview transcript on The Verge⁠.

Links: 

• Inside the fight over Claude Mythos 5 | ⁠The Verge⁠
• Anthropic cuts off Fable 5 and Mythos 5 access following government order | ⁠The Verge⁠
• Anthropic got hit by export rules nobody understands | ⁠The Verge⁠
• Anthropic’s safety superpower | ⁠Stratechery⁠
• "They screwed us": Personality clashes sent Anthropic's models offline | ⁠Axios⁠
• Anthropic’s call for AI nonproliferation | ⁠New York Times⁠
• Trump signs exec order to review AI models before release | ⁠The Verge⁠
• New Anthropic model finds security problems ‘in every major OS, browser’ | ⁠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

Today, I’m talking with Slydio CEO Adam Bry, who runs the leading US maker of autonomous drones. We covered a lot in this conversation, including Skydio’s police and government work at a time when military use of AI is more controversial than ever and competing with Chinese drones against the backdrop of the Trump’s administration’s DJI ban.

There’s a lot in this one – maybe more than anything, it was refreshing to hear Adam talk about using AI to bring even more people to work at Skydio as the company expands. I also got to fly a drone, which ruled.

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links: 

• Flying a semi-autonomous industrial drone | Decoder
• Sorry kid, drones are for war now | The Verge
• The FCC’s foreign drone ban is here | The Verge
• Skydio is pivoting to enterprise — its consumer drones are dead | The Verge
• Skydio commits $3.5B to expand US manufacturing | Skydio
• A US drone maker tries to take back the country’s skies | Bloomberg
• DEA looks to add Skydio, Parrot drones to its arsenal | FedScoop
• The future of border security isn’t at the border at all | 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! Nilay here. It’s conference season, so I’m traveling across the country and around the world a lot more than usual. Stay tuned for some very special Decoder episodes we have coming up soon, starting on Monday. 

In the meantime, I wanted to share a conversation between my friend Peter Kafka and Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on the excellent Channels podcast. Lynch says he’s told his teams to assume that traffic will be zero from now on — that’s what I’ve been calling Google Zero. Roger also shares his thoughts on AI, the growing influence of the creator economy, and more.

Links: 

• Channels with Peter Kafka | Apple Podcasts
• Condé Nast CEO: Plan As If Search Traffic Will Be Zero | Search Engine Journal
• Sundar Pichai on AI, the future of search, and what’s happening to the web | Decoder
• Google Zero is here — now what? | Decoder
• Google admits the open web is in ‘rapid decline’ | The Verge
  

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 Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI. This is a real burner of an episode. We covered everything from his approach to training new models to his criticisms of Anthropic talking about Claude as though it is conscious. 

Of course, we also talked about Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI, how Mustafa is thinking about all the negative polling and political pushback around AI right now, and whether any of the consumer products are good enough to overcome it. Like I said, it’s a burner.

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links: 

• Microsoft and OpenAI broke up — now they’re ready to fight | The Verge
• Microsoft Build 2026: The 7 biggest announcements | The Verge
• Microsoft’s first advanced reasoning AI is here | The Verge
• Microsoft’s new ‘superintelligence’ game plan is all about business | The Verge
• Here’s how the new Microsoft and OpenAI deal breaks down | The Verge
• Microsoft AI chief says 18 months until white-collar tasks automated by AI | FT

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

My guest today is Ryan Mac, a technology reporter at The New York Times and co-author of the excellent book Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, which came out in 2024. I wanted to have Ryan on today because we’re on the cusp of the SpaceX IPO, which promises to be one of the most consequential public offerings in history for a variety of reasons. 

Its biggest-ever size, of course, at nearly $2 trillion dollars. But also because all kinds of rules that keep our markets fair are being bent, if not outright broken, along the way. And, also because buried somewhere inside SpaceX is X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, which Musk purchased in 2022.

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links: 

• Welcome to hell, Elon | The Verge
• The SpaceX IPO is great for Elon Musk and terrible for you | The Verge
• In SpaceX’s IPO, Elon Musk is the risk factor | The Verge
• For Wall Street, the only thing worse than SpaceX flopping is missing out | NYT
• How SpaceX Is structured to favor Elon Musk | NYT
• As the SpaceX hype machine steamrolls ahead, Wall Street jumps aboard | NYT
• The SpaceX IPO Reveals What Really Happened to Twitter | NY Mag

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

I last talked to Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr in 2024 — when it was obvious that generative AI would upend the music industry, but not exactly clear how that would happen.

Now, Harvey says AI is “omnipresent” in music production. So what kinds of tools are musicians using, in what way, and what kind of music is it making for us? Is it any good? And how do we identify, and take care of, actual human musicians in this mess?

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links: 

• Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr | Decoder
• Is ‘blue dot fever’ a real problem for the concert industry? | Los Angeles Times
• USA v. LiveNation-Ticketmaster: All the news | The Verge
• The future of country music is here, and it’s AI | The Verge
• Poll: AI is transforming how we think about music | Hollywood Reporter
• Inside the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ era of AI in music | Rolling Stone
  

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. 

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

Today, I’m talking with Wassym Bensaid, the chief software officer at Rivian, and the co-ceo of Rivian’s platform joint venture with Volkswagen. That joint venture, called RV Tech, is about a year and a half old, so I wanted to ask Wassym how it all works and Rivian’s ongoing relationship with Volkswagen. 

Because it’s Rivian, I also had to ask Wassym about CarPlay. But the company also just launched an AI-powered voice assistant, which I got to try early. So I had a lot of fun digging into that with Wassym, too. This is a fun one – really in the weeds of a lot of my favorite things to talk about.

Links: 

• Rivian’s AI-powered voice assistant is ready to roll | The Verge
• The R2 is nearly here — can Rivian stick the landing? | The Verge
• Rivian’s AI pivot is about more than chasing Tesla | The Verge
• Rivian / VW will start testing their first EVs next year | The Verge
• Rivian CEO: ‘We’re really convicted’ about skipping CarPlay | Decoder (2025)
• Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe says too many carmakers are copying Tesla | Decoder (2024)
• Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe isn't scared of the Cybertruck | Decoder (2023)
• Rivian’s chief software officer says in-car buttons are ‘an anomaly’ | TechCrunch

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,. This episode was edited by Xander Adams. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

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

Connecting with Google CEO Sundar Pichai at I/O every year is one of my favorite Decoder traditions. This was our fifth year doing it, and there’s always a whole slew of new things to talk about.

This year, in addition to the news, we talked about Google Zero; picking fights with YouTube creators and publishers; and what being at “the foothills of the singularity" even means.

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links:

• If Google can’t make AI agents useful, maybe no one can | The Verge
• The future of Google is a search box that does everything | The Verge
• Large language mistake | The Verge
• You can now remix other people’s YouTube Shorts with AI | The Verge
• Condé Nast calls Google Zero | The Verge
• Demis Hassabis said this may be the ‘foothills of the singularity’ | The Verge
• Google I/O 2026: All the news and announcements | 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. This episode was edited by Kabir Chopra. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

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

Musk v Altman was nominally about OpenAI's conversion to a for-profit entity, and how it went about that change. But really, the suit seems mostly to have been about Elon Musk being mad at Sam Altman — or at OpenAI, for being successful without him — and wanting him punished in some way.

Verge reporter Liz Lopatto spent the last month covering the trial, in all its chaos, and joins Decoder to ask: In a courtroom full of untrustworthy, unreliable people all fighting with each other, did anyone even have a reputation left to lose?

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links: 

• Elon Musk loses his case against Sam Altman | The Verge
• Musk v. Altman proved AI is led by the wrong people | The Verge
• Musk v. Altman accomplished nothing but airing dirty laundry | The Verge
• Elon Musk’s worst enemy in court is Elon Musk | The Verge
• Behold, the Elon Musk jackass trophy | 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