One of the ways I’ve been trying to sort out the chaos of tariffs and trade wars is by talking to the people behind the software that makes the global trade system go. So today I wanted to bring back one of my favorite Decoder guests: Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen, whose software manages the logistics of moving things around the world, from factory to doorstep. 

We didn’t get too much into the numbers — those tariff percentages keep changing — so instead Ryan and I really focused on how this system works, how it’s supposed to work, and how it’s working now, if it’s working at all. 

Links: 

• Flexport Tariff Live Blog | Flexport
• US tariffs: how Trump’s tax is hitting Big Tech and beyond | Verge
• How much will Trump’s tariffs cost U.S. importers? | NYT
• How much are tariffs on Chinese goods? It’s tricky | NYT
• How Trump’s tariff chaos is already changing global trade | Decoder
• Can software simplify the supply chain? Ryan Petersen thinks so | Decoder
• Why Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen took his company back | Decoder
• The U.S.-China decoupling arrives | Axios

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

Today, I’m talking with Vlad Tenev, the co-founder and CEO of Robinhood, which started as a way to open up stock trading. But the company’s ambitions have grown over time – and they’re getting bigger. Just a day before Vlad and I talked, Robinhood announced it would soon be offering bank accounts and wealth management services, which would really allow Robinhood to be involved with your money at every possible level. 

So I was very interested to sit down with Vlad and really hash out where Robinhood is going, and why he’s so adamant that certain big ideas, like prediction markets based around everything from sports games to presidential elections, are going to play a pivotal role in the future of finance.

Links: 

• Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev on markets for everything | Hard Fork
• Robinhood is launching bank accounts | Verge
• Kalshi sues Nevada and New Jersey regulators | Esports Insider
• Kalshi CEO: ‘State law doesn’t really apply’ to us | TechCrunch
• Robinhood debuts a sports gambling hub | Verge
• The SEC has ended its investigation into Robinhood crypto | Verge
• Robinhood admits it’s just a gambling app | Verge
• Massachusetts regulator subpoenas Robinhood over sports betting | CNN

Verge Transcript

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

Rohit Chopra was the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau head until the end of January, when President Donald Trump fired him and Elon Musk’s DOGE began trying to dismantle the agency. The CFPB has been pretty popular since it was founded in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to protect consumers, so shutting it down has kicked off a bunch of controversies — not least of which was whether Trump and Musk even had the power to do it.

This all led me to ask several times who made the decision to fire him, who is currently responsible for the various policies of our government, and whether any of those things add up to a clear plan. Some of the most powerful executives in the world answer questions like this on Decoder all the time. But Rohit just didn’t know — and that should probably be as worrying as anything.

Links: 

• Trump fires CFPB director Rohit Chopra | Associated Press
• Trump orders CFPB to stop work, closes building | Associated Press
• CFPB workers reinstated after court order but still can’t work | The Verge
• Trump admin to appeal order blocking CFPB shutdown | Bloomberg Law
• A shady tech bootcamp may be sneaking back online | The Verge
• CFPB won’t enforce long-awaited payday lending rule | Bloomberg Law
• CFPB seeks to vacate redlining settlement, refund lender | Banking Dive
• CFPB signals it will drop rule regulating BNPL like credit cards | PYMTS
• CFPB drops fraud lawsuit against banks, Zelle | CNBC

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

Today, I’m talking with Daniel Dines, the co-founder and once again the CEO of UiPath, a software company that specializes in something called robotic process automation. We’ve been featuring a lot of what I like to call full-circle Decoder guests on the show lately, and Daniel is a perfect example.

He was first on the show in 2022, and UiPath has had a lot of changes since then, including a short stint with a different CEO. Daniel is now back at the helm, and the timing is important: the company needs to shift, fast, to a world of agentic AI, which is radically changing the RPA business. We got into all that and more in this episode. It’s a fun one. 

Links: 

• UiPath’s Daniel Dines thinks automation can fight the great resignation | Decoder
• Daniel Dines: Why Agents Do Not Mean RPA is Fucked | Harry Stebbings
• UiPath to re-appoint Daniel Dines as CEO | UiPath
• UiPath shares tank 30% after company announces CEO shakeup | CNBC
• UiPath to lay off 10% of workforce in companywide restructuring | CNBC
• UiPath looks for a path to growth with Peak agentic AI acquisition | TechCrunch
• How RPA vendors aim to remain relevant in a world of AI agents | TechCrunch 
• UiPath finds firmer footing with pivot to general automation, AI | TechCrunch

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/643562

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

Today, we’re diving head first into the AI art debate, which to be honest, is an absolute mess. If you’ve been on the internet this past week, you’ve seen the Studio Ghibli memes. These images are everywhere — and they’ve widened an already pretty stark rift between AI boosters and critics.

Brian Merchant, author of the newsletter and book Blood in the Machine, wrote one of the best analyses of the Ghibli trend last week. So I invited him onto the show not only to discuss this particular situation, but also to help me dissect the ongoing AI art debate more broadly. 

Links: 

• OpenAI's Studio Ghibli meme factory is an insult to art itself | Brian Merchant
• Seattle engineer’s Ghibli-style image goes viral | Seattle Times
• OpenAI just raised another $40 billion round from SoftBank | Verge
• ChatGPT “added one million users in the last hour.” | Verge
• ChatGPT’s Ghibli filter is political now, but it always was | Verge
• OpenAI, Google ask the government to let them train on content they don’t own | Verge
• Studio Ghibli in the age of A.I. reproduction | Max Read
• OpenAI has a Studio Ghibli problem | Vergecast
• AI slop is a brute force attack on the algorithms that control reality | 404 Media
• The New Aesthetics of Fascism | New Socialist

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

Unity is one of those hidden in plain sight companies we love here on Decoder, and CEO Matt Bromberg is in many ways the perfect Decoder guest. He's been on the job less than a year and took over in a moment of crisis. He describes the company as being "at war with its customers" before he joined, and he's not wrong.

The game industry right now is also contracting overall — studios are closing, and some big bets on things like the metaverse and live service games haven’t paid off. So we talked about all that, and where Matt sees growth ahead: Unity isn’t just a game engine provider, but the platform for everything from running those big live services and the monetization on top of them.

Links: 

• Unity’s struggles continue with fresh wave of layoffs | The Verge
• Unity attempts to turn things around with latest game engine release | The Verge
• Unity has eliminated its controversial runtime fee | The Verge
• ‘We want to be a fundamentally different and better company’ | IGN
• John Riccitiello is out at Unity, effective immediately | The Verge
• Unity is laying off 25% of its staff | The Verge
• Unity cancels town hall over reported death threats | The Verge
• Unity has changed its pricing model and developers are pissed off | The Verge
• Toyota chooses Unity for next-generation interface | Unity

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

Today we’re talking about bird flu, but in a pretty Decoder way. Science journalist Lauren Leffer, who recently wrote a piece for The Verge about bird flu and how it’s becoming a forever war, is joining me on the show. We’re going to talk about the systems, structure, and culture that might control bird flu — and those that might make it worse.

Links: 

• We’ve entered a forever war with bird flu | Verge
• Kennedy’s alarming prescription for bird flu on poultry farms | NYT
• First bird flu death in US reported in Louisiana | NYT
• Bird flu found in sheep in UK, a world first | NYT
• Shell shocked: how small eateries are dealing with record egg prices | NYT
• Animal Farm: eggflation’s monopoly problem | The Lever
• At the ‘Wall Street of Eggs,’ Demand Is Surging | WSJ
• How to protect your pets from bird flu | Popular Science
• What to know about the bird flu outbreak in wild birds | AP
• Bird flu continues to spread as Trump experts are MIA | Ars Technica

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

Today, I’m talking with Kakul Srivastava, CEO of music creation platform Splice, which is one of the biggest marketplaces around for loops and samples. You can just go sign up, pay the money, and download these loops to try to make pop hits all day long. Take, for instance, Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso, which was composed almost entirely out of Splice loops. 

Now, if you’re a Decoder listener, you know that some of my favorite conversations are with people building technology products for creatives, and that I am obsessed with how technology changes the music industry, because it feels like whatever happens to music happens to everything else five years later. So this one was really interesting, because Splice is all wrapped in all of that. 

Links: 

• Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso highlights the way new music is made | Bloomberg
• Major record labels sue AI company behind ‘BBL Drizzy’ | Verge
• Splice CEO’s message for AI sceptics? “Trust the artists” | MusicTech
• Splice launches voice recording on Splice Mobile at SXSW | Splice
• OpenAI & Google ask government to let them train AI on content they don’t own | Verge
• AI Drake just set an impossible legal trap for Google | Verge
• Pharrell Williams: $7.3 million Blurred Lines verdict threatens all artists | Verge
• Lady Gaga, nostalgia, and the ‘reheated nachos’ phenomenon in pop culture | Her World
• AI music startups say copyright violation is just rock and roll | Verge
• Suno CEO says musicians don’t actually like making music | Vice

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/632036

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

Today we're talking about the Tesla Takedown protest movement, which has emerged as a way for people to express how deeply unhappy they are with Elon Musk installing himself as a not-so-shadow president who is tearing the federal government apart, leaving confusion and destruction in his wake.

Tesla's stock price is sinking, new car registrations and down, and hype around the company is fading rapidly. There's an opportunity there for the protestors, and I asked Ed Niedermeyer on the show to help me pull it all apart.

Links: 

• Is Tesla cooked? | Verge
• Elon Musk Has Become Too Toxic for YouTube | New York Magazine
• ‘Tesla Takedown’ wants to hit Elon Musk where it hurts | Verge
• The Tesla protests are getting bigger — and rowdier | Verge
• ‘Tesla Takedown’ protesters planning ‘biggest day of action’ | Verge
• Tesla registrations — and public opinion — are in a free fall | Verge
• Multiple Teslas set on fire in Las Vegas and Kansas City | Verge
• Mark Rober’s Tesla video was more than a little weird | Verge
• Tesla sales fell year-over-year for the first time | Verge
• The cybertruck isn’t all it’s cracked up to be | Verge
• Tesla autopilot, FSD linked to hundreds of crashes, dozens of deaths | Verge
• Tesla crash victims’ families worried about Musk influence on investigations | Verge

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

I'm talking to Evan Smith, who started Altana in 2019 because he predicted the first wave of globalized manufacturing and trade would end, and that companies would want new powerful tools to adapt their supply chains as the world grew more complex. Here in 2025, that looks like a pretty good bet — even if the way it's playing out is more stressful and chaotic than anyone really wants it to be.

There are some big, unsettling ideas here, but talking about them directly and with clarity at least made me feel like I had a framework to understand the endless on-again, off-again news cycle on tariffs and trade.

Links: 

• Globalization 2.0 Manifesto | Altana
• The ‘giant sucking sound’ of NAFTA | The Conversation
• ‘Offensive Realism’: The never-ending struggle for power | American Diplomacy (2002)
• Foreign Affairs Big Mac I | NYT (1996)
• The end of the Golden Arches Doctrine | Financial Times
• Trump could scale back tariffs, Lutnick says | CNBC
• China joined rule-based trading system — then broke the rules | Politico
• Open Source and China: Inverting Copyright? | Wisconsin International Law Journal
• How the US lost out on iPhone work | NYT

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

Today, I’m talking to Verge policy editor Adi Robertson about a bill called the Take It Down Act, which is one in a long line of bills that would make it illegal to distribute non-consensual intimate imagery, or NCII. This is a real and devastating problem on the internet, and AI is just making it worse. 

But Adi just wrote a long piece arguing that giving the Trump administration new powers over speech in this way would be a mistake. So in this episode, Adi and I really get into the details of the Take it Down Act, how it might be weaponized, and why we ultimately can’t trust anything the Trump administration says about wanting to solve this problem. 

Links: 

• The Take It Down Act isn’t a law, it’s a weapon | Verge
• A bill combatting the spread of AI deepfakes just passed the Senate | Verge
• Welcome to the era of gangster tech regulation | Verge
• FTC workers are getting terminated | Verge
• Bluesky deletes AI protest video of Trump sucking Musk's toes | 404 Media
• Trump supports Take It Down Act so he can silence critics | EFF
• Scarlett Johansson calls for deepfake ban after AI video goes viral | Verge
• The FCC is a weapon in Trump’s war on free speech | Decoder
• Trolls have flooded X with graphic Taylor Swift AI fakes | Verge
• Teen girls confront an epidemic of deepfake nudes in schools | NYT

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