How to win — or lose — Decoder

Summary

Podcast Summary: Decoder with Nilay Patel

Episode Title: How to win — or lose — Decoder
Date: April 30, 2026
Host: Nilay Patel (with Senior Producer Nick Statt)
Podcast: Decoder, The Verge

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Overview

In this candid mailbag episode, The Verge’s Nilay Patel and Senior Producer Nick Statt dive deep into the mechanics and philosophy behind Decoder, reflecting on recent episodes, listener feedback, and the challenges of interviewing tech leaders. They discuss accountability journalism in tech, the tension of interviewing media-trained CEOs, audience appetite for tough questions, and the evolving story of artificial intelligence as covered by the show. The conversation is direct, reflective, sometimes self-deprecating, and filled with insights about both the podcasting process and the tech industry itself.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Reception of Controversial Episodes

Superhuman/Grammarly AI Controversy (03:14 - 07:21)

• The episode featuring Superhuman CEO Shashir Malhotra was the most popular and contentious of the year, sparking intense listener feedback — much of it positive, but some critical.
• Nilay explains that Shashir was already booked before the controversy, but his deep experience made him a good candidate for tough questions.
• Nilay’s goal: “I took the opportunity to ask the questions as plainly and as bluntly as I could… I think it was a service to the audience because that tension right now is reflected in every conversation about AI.” (06:05)
• Surprise that people were shocked by the approach since “that’s what we do here on Decoder… That’s what we make. I hope we continue to make it.” (07:14)

2. Interviewing Philosophy & Emotional Tone

Objectivity vs. Personal Stake (08:17 - 10:18)

• Nilay notes that having an AI clone of himself in a product made the issue personal, but insisted his questioning was about conveying intensity, not anger:

  “What I felt was intensity. And I think those things are a little different… There’s no anger here… The intensity is, hey, are we going to stop and think about this for one second?” (09:35)

3. Platforming vs. Accountability

Should the Show Give Tech Leaders a Platform? (10:56 - 13:24)

• Nilay argues transparently that ignoring problematic actors or troubling tech doesn’t make the problems go away; he prefers honest engagement.
• On the balance between giving executives a voice and holding them accountable:

  “I've become convinced over time that ignoring things does not make them go away.” (13:12)

• He references failed de-platforming attempts (e.g., Trump) as evidence for open, challenging discourse.

4. Dealing with Difficult or Evasive Interviews

Puck CEO and Media-trained Guests (17:04 - 21:29)

• Listeners are polarized on “cringe” interviews — some find the tension revealing, others find it unlistenable.
• On guests dodging questions, Nilay says:

  “I'm not gonna back off on. Do you understand the basics of your business? That seems like totally fair game to me, and I don't think [Sarah Personette] does.” (19:24)

• The podcast is a “game you can win” — but also one you can lose. Engagement and candor from guests make episodes successful.

5. The State of Business Podcasting & Media

Journalism vs. “Influencer” Content (21:29 - 28:09)

• Audience hunger for accountability journalism exists but often collides with PR-driven podcasts and influencer “interviews.”
• Nilay explains why Decoder stands out:

  "It's the fact that they are not in control that makes the thing valuable. And that external validation is so important." (25:07)

• Decoder refuses to give questions in advance or permit approvals/edits after the fact, maintaining journalistic integrity.

6. Covering AI: Structure and Critique

How Decoder and The Verge Approach AI (31:05 - 41:08)

• Balancing coverage between skepticism and genuine use cases; noticing the shift to more negative public sentiment about AI.
• Nilay:

  “On the consumer side the answer is manifestly no. [AI products] cannot do the things they've promised… that's why consumers are turning on AI. They're not getting the value, but they're getting all the demands.” (34:17)

• Enterprise/Business AI adoption is more promising, but there's little real love for consumer AI products.

Polls, Public Backlash, and the “AI Apocalypse”

• Addressing critiques about not taking AI’s threats seriously enough, Nilay maintains a focus on demanding clarity and substance from tech leaders.
• “Unless you have a product that can overcome it, I don’t think you’re going to change the hearts and minds.” (39:27)
• Compelling consumer products can overcome political/policy backlash (e.g., Uber); current AI offerings don't achieve this.

7. Show Structure and Future Directions

Debate Episodes and Format Experiments (41:08 - 43:24)

• Listener request for debate-style episodes: early experiment with Bitcoin was interesting but Nilay is wary of the genre’s tendency toward performative argument over substance.
• "Those shows rely on performance. They do not rely on substance." (42:09)
• Nilay prefers moderating debates, not taking a debater’s stance himself.

Upcoming ‘Decoder’ Book (43:24 - 46:22)

• Book title: How to Get What You Want.
• Nilay describes it as both a joke and a genuine manual, inspired by conversations with CEOs on Decoder.
• “If you tell me how your company is structured, I can tell you 80% of its problems.” (45:05)
• Aim: Provide young professionals with practical, real-world frameworks for navigating companies, leadership, and decision-making.

8. Dream Guests & Podcast Aspirations

Future Booking Goals (46:22 - 47:51)

• Actively seeking interviews with Sam Altman (OpenAI), Dario Amodei (Anthropic), and Apple’s John Ternus; Alex Karp (Palantir) would be “the funniest episode.”
• Most interested in business leaders who are creatively and meaningfully leveraging AI in practice, not just building core models.

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Memorable Quotes

• “Being a permanent guest is a level of success that is hard to attain… At the same time, being the guest means you also have to be interesting all the time. Being the host, you're just in control.” — Nilay Patel (02:24)
• “If we don't ask these questions, if we don't ask them sort of relentlessly, then we will never make the people building the products actually think about what the answer should be.” — Nilay Patel (06:37)
• “I'm just trying to ask questions and learn what people are doing and how they're doing it. Sometimes what I'm saying is, hey, have you thought about making your platform less racist? And that feels like I'm advocating, like, really hard and being really fired up. Have you thought about not stealing everything from everyone all the time?” — Nilay Patel (42:56)
• “It's called how to get what you want because I want people to feel empowered… All the companies are the same. Like they're all functional or divisional. If you listen to Decoder, you know these answers.” — Nilay Patel (45:42)

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Important Timestamps

• Mailbag Episode Intro: 01:51–03:14
• Superhuman/AI Controversy Breakdown: 03:14–07:21
• Interviewing Philosophy (Intensity vs. Anger): 08:17–10:18
• Platforming Debate: 10:56–13:24
• Puck CEO/Evasive Interviews: 17:04–21:29
• The State of Tech Podcasting and Journalistic Integrity: 21:29–28:09
• AI Coverage & Shifting Audience Perceptions: 31:05–41:08
• Debate Format Question: 41:08–43:24
• Upcoming Decoder Book: 43:24–46:22
• Moonshot Guests: 46:22–47:51

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Tone and Style

The conversation is direct, thoughtful, and at times wryly humorous, with Nilay openly interrogating both his own methods and the broader tech landscape. The exchange with Nick Statt feels like a blend of meta-commentary, inside-baseball media talk, and practical insight for listeners interested in tech, media, and journalism.

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For New Listeners

This episode serves as a masterclass in how Decoder is made: why guests are chosen, how tough questions are crafted, what makes a compelling podcast interview, and why genuine accountability and journalistic rigor matter — especially in an industry awash with hype, PR gloss, and rapidly shifting technology norms. It’s an accessible entry point for anyone curious about The Verge’s approach to tech coverage or wondering what makes Decoder’s brand of business journalism unique.

Transcript

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

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[Nick Statt]

Hello and welcome to Decoder Nilai's show about big ideas and other problems. This is Nick Stat, senior producer and I'm joined by host very occasional guest Nilay Patel. Nilai, welcome back to your own show.

[Nilay Patel]

Hello. I hate being the guest.

[Nick Statt]

Now you have said that in the past but I feel like there's also a version of you that says that that is the ideal version of this show where you just get to not do anything and show up and talk about stuff. So I feel like there are you're of two minds with how the show of like what is the. What is the ideal version of Decoder?

[Nilay Patel]

Being a permanent guest is a level of success that is hard to attain where other people just want you to show up because they think you will be interesting and I would love to attain that level of success. At the same time, being the guest means you also have to be interesting all the time. Being the host, you're just in control. You're basically saying, can you be interesting over and over again for an hour and then you see what happens?

[Nick Statt]

That is my job today. A few months ago, we did our annual mailbag episode, which we were thinking of as like an annual thing that would happen around the holidays where we respond to listener questions, feedback, criticism, suggestions. But recently I think we thought we should just do this more often because we get a ton of great feedback and we do read all of the emails. So we are here again. So I thought we would just jump into it. Nilay, you ready?

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah, let's do it.

[Nick Statt]

So by far our most popular episode of this year was also our most contentious. It was your interview, Nilay, with Superhuman CEO Shashir Malhotra, that focused heavily on Grammarly's expert review controversy. We got mounds and mounds of feedback about that episode. Most of it was overwhelmingly positive. There were a lot of interesting emails and comments and feedback we wanted to highlight here. Some of them were like, damn near's questions are making me nervous was one of our top comments. Another said, we need to make tech CEOs this uncomfortable more often. A Verge subscriber wrote in to say, this episode was extremely uncomfortable to listen to and absolutely the reason I became a subscriber less than a week ago. So I think to kick this all off, Nilay, my first question for you is, how did you feel about the reception to the Superhuman episode? Were you at all surprised by any of the reactions?

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah, I was a little surprised by some of your action. I can get into that. You know, as Nick alluded to, Shashir was booked to come on the show well before any of the controversy, and I was really excited to talk to him. He had been both the chief product officer and the chief technology officer at YouTube. He's on the board at Spotify. He was thinking about distributing AI through Grammarly, and distributing AI is actually a really hard challenge. You're up against Google, you're up against Apple, which is going to integrate AI into iOS with Google's models over time. So, you know, there's just a lot to talk about there in the creator economy and where AI is supposed to go and how it's supposed to work. And then this thing happened and I gave Shashir a lot of credit for coming on the show. He knew what he was going to get. It's not that we give people the questions. I think it was just obvious what I was going to ask about. And my feeling was that he could take the heat because he had these big roles at big companies and I didn't, I don't like taking like young founders and putting them on trial for the whole industry. But given Shashir's background, his depth of expertise, his enormous network, and his ability to just sit in there and answer the questions, I felt like we could do that with that episode because of who Shashir was. It felt like I could ask him about the specific issues in the case as a proxy for the bigger issues with AI. And I think a lot of people were responding to that. And so the thing that surprised me was the reaction that kind of felt like, you don't understand AI, this is just how it's going to be. You don't understand what being a builder is like. And I kind of get it from one perspective, but I think my response is a, this is what Decoder is about. What are the consequences of building these products and how do these products actually work and how should they actually work and how should we all feel about them? And my sort of more important response, if we don't ask these questions, if we don't ask them sort of relentlessly, then we will never make the people building the products actually think about what the answer should be. And that was really my goal. I know Shashir is thoughtful. I know he came on because he can take the heat. And I took the opportunity to ask the questions as plainly and as bluntly as I could. And maybe that made people feel uncomfortable. I feel like everybody in the room got exactly what they knew was coming, you know, and I, I think it was a service to the audience because that tension right now is reflected in every conversation about AI. Are these companies taking too much from us? Are they running roughshod over the laws we have to protect things like creativity and likeness and, you know, large bodies of work that authors and creatives and other people should be compensated for when you use them again? And we're just racing forward without resolving the answers to any of those questions. So I think we, we accomplished what we wanted to that episode. I'm, I'm not surprised at the reaction it got. I think the thing that did surprise me is I, that's what we do here on Decoder. So coming to the store and being like, I don't like the product you're selling is, well, that's, that's what we're, that's what we make. I hope we continue to make it.

[Nick Statt]

One commenter, Brendan G. Actually wrote in about the Superhuman episode. He does media training professionally. And, and so he obviously hates listening to media trained executives, but he said either Shashir's media training was really good, or he was just smart enough to ignore it and decided to have a real conversation other than occasionally hiding behind lawyers. Brendan also said that from his perspective, it felt like you spent a lot of time grinding what felt like a personal ax. You sounded angry, although he doesn't know if that was a kind of performance that you were doing. And you said, from a media trainer's perspective, I would have loved that because it just makes Shashir, in this case, seem reasonable or calm. So the question for you, Nilai, is how did you decide to approach that interview? And did you think of it as you having to kind of play a part on behalf of the people whose likenesses Superhuman had appropriated? Or were you just, you know, was your strategy just, oh, I'm going to just nail him on this one part around, like, how much he owes me, and then we're going to go from there?

[Nilay Patel]

It's very rare that the story is actually about me. Just not. Not a thing that occurs very often on decoder or on the verge as a whole. And so this was one of the rare times where I was just in the story, just straightforwardly. There was an AI clone of me in their product, and that felt like I could make this story more human. Just from the beginning, I didn't have to explain how it would affect regular people. It was just very obvious how it was affecting me. My feeling was that by just letting the story naturally be about me, which I don't like doing and which I think no journalist likes doing, but by letting it naturally be about me, I could make the stakes of it plain. Right? And I think a lot of people who felt themselves reflected in that story, a lot of artists want to go up to a CEO and say, how much are you going to pay me? And very few of us will ever get that opportunity. And this was just one of those opportunities. So I took it. I think the anger piece is really interesting, and I do think that is because it was me in first person talking about myself. I didn't feel angry during that interview. I. I certainly have a temper. It rarely comes out, but I. I didn't feel anger. What I felt was intensity. And I think those things are a little different. And I think a lot of our interviews lately have had a lot of intensity to them, and I think maybe you can mistake that. Franker and I should do a better job of communicating the nuances of those emotions. But there. There's no anger here. Like, I. I'm aware that the tech industry is going to take all of my work and remix it on a thousand platforms every single day. It's been happening to 15 like that. That's just a thing that happens. I think the intensity is, hey, are we going to stop and think about this for one second? Are we going to think about the value exchange here for one second? I get the opportunity to do that. I'm very lucky that I get the opportunity that I think a lot of people don't have that opportunity ever. And I, I was hoping to reflect that intensity in the questions.

[Nick Statt]

One commenter, I think, wrote something interesting about this, which is he said that in reference to you asking Shashir how much they should pay you. He said, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say they'll. They'll pay you. Zero doll fact. They just did that. They got free publicity and you didn't sue to him. He won this round. Which, of course, you know, you don't. You're not part of the lawsuit yet, or. We don't determine who's part of the lawsuit as journalists. But I think that relates to a question nei that we get a lot of the time here on decoder, which is, are we platforming people that don't deserve a platform? Are we giving them free publicity to hawk their product or push AI hype or whatever it is?

[Nilay Patel]

I have a lot of complicated feelings about the platforming debate. We've run the Verge for 15 years. We've lived through a lot of different versions of who do you platform? Should you platform them? Are you just giving people free publicity? And I've arrived at the conclusion, and I know a lot of people disagree about this and that's fine. That the Verge, the, the thing that we make. Choosing not to platform people effectively does not matter. You can just look around and be like, well, if you ignore things, they don't go away. So it is better for us to ask the questions and be direct and make people face the logical conclusions to the thoughts they have started to have. But I don't think the people we have on the show are bad actors to the level where we should be having a platforming debate. I think they are, by and large people who are trying to build things, people who want to talk about the way they build things. There are people who are running complex organizations with lots and lots of multifaceted challenges, and it just seems better to have honest, sincere conversations about what all those things mean than to say, I hate every CEO in the world and we're never having them on the show. And that's just, you know, it's my position, it's our little show, but I'm just. I've become convinced over time that ignoring things does not make them go away. The major platformers all deplatform Donald Trump and now he is our president again and he is creating a particular kind of chaos that is almost unimaginable. De Platforming him simply did not work. I don't know what else to say about that. There are all kinds of ultra hard right, ultra nationalist figures who have been kicked off of platforms come back on platforms. I don't think we're going to have a bunch of ethno nationalists on our show anytime soon. I'm not suggesting that's where we need to go. I just think that this answer about platforming CEOs and giving them free publicity, it reflects a kind of nihilism that I'm trying actively to get away from. And what I would like to do is to say they come on the show because they know. All these people know what kind of questions I'm gonna ask at this point. The show has a reputation. I have a reputation. They come on because they wanna show that they can take the heat. And then, you know, my job is to do a good job. And I think that balance that dance actually ideally hopes to make everybody more considerate again. I think you can disagree with all this. A lot of people have disagreed with all this. I've just arrived. I personally have arrived at the conclusion that ignoring things doesn't make them go away.

[Nick Statt]

You need to pause here for a quick break. We'll be right back.

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[Nilay Patel]

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[Nilay Patel]

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[Nilay Patel]

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[Nick Statt]

Welcome back. This is Decoder Senior producer Nick Stat making NEI answer all of your questions. So another episode that we got a ton of feedback about NEI was of course our most recent, one of our most recent episodes with Puck CEO Sarah Peretz in particular. Listeners almost universally picked up on Sarah's evasiveness. A lot of listeners were divided on whether this makes for a good podcast or not. One listener, Alejandro Tauber, sent us a one line email saying the interview was majestic. Another listener said excellent. But we also got an almost equal amount of polar opposite feedback. One commenter wrote, when Nilay has a CEO who comes on, who comes off as overly media trained or maybe overly prepared, I have a hard time getting through it. Another commenter said, honestly, I couldn't listen through this one because of all the sidestepping, zooming out, non answers somebody wrote. This interview almost feels combative, but only because of the squirming. To avoid answering questions is truly out of this world. We get a lot of feedback about episodes like this where people are too overly prepared or they just kind of don't want to answer something and some people can't handle it because it makes them too uncomfortable. It kind of sounds like a. Like they're watching, like a cringe comedy. We heard this about Superhuman quite a bit. Some people said they couldn't listen to the whole thing because it made them too uncomfortable. The broader topic here, of course, is that we sometimes deal with challenging subjects that are either so trained or so boring or difficult to talk to. They're evasive or they're uninterested in straying from their talking points. And that creates a lot of unnecessary friction that is like, plainly obvious to anyone who's listening to the. To the interview. How are you thinking about those kinds of situations, whether they're, you know, whether you would describe them as adversarial or challenging, whatever. And have you been kind of tweaking your approach or your style in terms of how you get through these interviews or try to extract more insight out of them?

[Nilay Patel]

The weirdest thing about doing an interview show is that the episodes are only good if the other person is good. I can't make Sarah personet understand her business more than she does. I tried, man. I don't think she understands it at all, not even a little bit. And the questions I was asking her, I don't think were particularly adversarial. We got off that recording and I think it was Kevin McShane, our editorial director, who said, I don't think Sarah realized she's on the same side as you because she was in outer space. I'm not gonna back off on. Do you understand the basics of your business? That. That seems like totally fair game to me, and I don't think she does. I also feel like, you know, with Shashir is a good example. I knew that he was prepared. I knew he had the. The experience in the history. He could do it. If you are that if you're the guy who runs product at YouTube, people have asked you a lot harder questions. You faced a lot hotter fire than I can I can provide to you in a one hour conversation so that there's a spectrum here. And I, you know, I, I'm just going to flat out say it. I thought Sarah blew it. I thought that was one of the worst performances on the show we've ever had. And I think you could tell about halfway through that episode that I was just like, do you know anything? Maybe she does. She would. Maybe she just didn't know what show she was on and she wanted to give her TED Talk and she got derailed and that's that. On the other hand, I feel like if I do think, you know what you're saying, if I do think you have the depth of understanding and you're ready for it, then the pressure should only escalate. And so this is. Maybe it all feels the same in the end, but to me, just sitting in the room, it. They feel like very different vibes and that. That's what I just want to do. I. You. Like I said, to make an interview show, the other person has to a. They have to want to show up. You know, we always say the decoder is a game you can win. They have to want to be here and participate honestly and openly. They have to think that they're going to come out the other end and they won't feel completely attacked because otherwise we won't get guests. Like, they have to. They can just hang up, they can just click the button and go. So the show has to be an environment that reflects and respects the participation. At the same time, if it's a game you can win, it's also a game you can lose. And I think we're just seeing that dynamic. I think everyone is very used to very puffy influencer interviews. There's a lot of that going around lately, and maybe everyone should just be one more turn more prepared.

[Nick Statt]

There's a real, like, hunger from the audience for what you might call accountability journalism, especially in podcast form, and particularly with the current tech and AI industries. The joke that you've said before is that the audience wants you to end every episode by arresting a CEO. And we've even had some commenters now referencing that as an editorial strategy. They. Some people are saying, you know, they want you to be tougher even, but this is running headlong into the idea that companies don't necessarily want to do these kinds of interviews all the time or even often, and that people don't like being put into unpredictable situations where they don't know the questions, they don't know what you're going to ask. And then audiences themselves are not really even all that interested sometimes in that kind of product. Like the end result of that, like Diary of a CEO is not hard hitting journalism, even though it's very engaging acquired. TVPN is certainly not journalism. And whatever monitoring the situation from Horowitz is not journalism at all. But I think we saw a version of this kind of play out recently with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Dorkish Patel, right where he's not a traditional journalist, but he asked some challenging questions and it kind of broke people's brains because they weren't used to seeing somebody kind of checking somebody like Jensen, a rich tech guy, but also like head of the most profit head of the most valuable company in the world and people kind of think he's unfallible. And this was a, this was a rare moment where people were kind of divided on what's the purpose of this interview. So, Nilay, the question for you is how are you thinking about that tension between the functions of journalism, what the audience wants, and then what the audience actually responds to when it comes to tough questions? And also, you know, why do you think people are coming on this show when they're, you know, we're not paying them, we're not telling them what we're going to ask beforehand, even though they know what to expect. They are going kind of, they are, they are going in kind of blind.

[Nilay Patel]

My favorite is when people show up and they're not ready to be asked what the structure of their company is or how they make decisions. I feel like those are gimmes at this point. And every now and again it's just like, oh, you didn't know? You can always tell how things are going to go when those questions seem like a surprise. I think journalism is critically important. Obviously we make journalism here. All of us who are making the show right now are journalists. We're steeped in it. Maybe we're just high on our own supply and the platforms are going to kill us all in the end. But I think it's important and our audience, when we even, you can see it now that we like make more clips and put them on social platforms, the audiences who have never encountered us before because the algorithms are just taking the videos to wherever they go. They're like, oh, I love this. Like finally someone's asking the questions. And that is remarkable. It's refreshing. I don't know what it is, but, but there's not a lot of that that people see. So that's the product we make it seems to have found some audience. I hope we continue to find more audience and we can all keep doing this because I like making journalism. I know why people come on the show. It has finally clicked for me. I've had a lot of conversations about it. You know, Nick and Kate, our producers will tell you we don't do a ton of outbound booking anymore. We have an incoming list. It's a mile long. People want to be on the show. And the number one reason that I hear is that all of these executives know that their own teams aren't going to listen to the all hands. Like, their own teams aren't going to read the emails. And it is good for them as leaders to go get the external validation. Not their own comms stuff, not their own branded content, not their own fake TED Talks. Some of them do fake TED Talks, which is wild. We've moved on to fake podcasts. We've gotten pitches. But for me to do a fake podcast that will then be clipped into like fake podcast clips, and I'm like, I don't need to. I have a real podcast. But this is the market that we live in and everyone can see through it. So if you can come on this show and explain your company well, explain how you make decisions as a leader, explain how your company is structured, take a little heat, be asked some challenging questions, do a good job. It is actually good for those folks out in the world with our audience, our actual audience, which is big and growing, but it is also good for them inside of their companies. And so, like I said, you can win that game and you can lose that game. It's the fact that they are not in control that makes the thing valuable. And that external validation is so important. I look at TVPN and congratulations for selling a podcast with 70,000 YouTube subscribers. $200 million. Like, that's great. It is very engaging. I've watched a lot of it. They were inside the industry. They're unapologetic boosters the industry. And now they're inside a company in the industry. They have no ability to provide external validation. They can. They, you know, it's it. They've lost the thing that might provide conflict. And conflict is what drives all great stories. Andreessen Horowitz has started and failed 10 million media brands. They had a tech blog called Future that was just about how great everything was. And it failed because no one wants to read it, because conflict and emotion is what drive stories. And you can't get that if you're inside. If you are working at a place where you are not allowed to criticize the people who work at your own company. You are never going write a good story about that company. You can write great press releases. You can write engaging like, here's how the factory works videos. But then we're going to come along and we're going to say, hey, your robot Apple that you said can recycle all the iPhones. There's only one of them. And it's not recycling any of the iPhones. Like, you can see this pattern happen over and over again. So I, I, I know what role we play in the ecosystem at the Verge and on Decoder, and it is to be outside. You have to show up here on our terms and do a good job. And we have a big audience. And if you do a good job, I think the audience will be excited for you. If you do a bad job, I think the audience is going to let you know it. And that is, that's hard to get. And you know, we're also precious about all of the rest of it. We won't do brand deals and integrated sponsorships and all the stuff that compromises that core promise that we make as journalists. I talk about that stuff a lot. I don't need to overdo it now. But that's to me is that's why everybody shows up. It's hard to find the thing that we make anymore. The producers and I will not give anyone the questions that they're going to face on decoder in advance. We will not let them tell us what topics they want to cover. We will not accept edits afterwards or approvals on, on answers afterwards. You have to show up and you have to do a good job and sometimes you can do a bad job and everybody can see it. I also think a lot of people are very confused by influencer media, where those asks are tied to brand deals and integrations and money to be made down the line. And there are approvals and we just don't do it. And sometimes people think they can pressure us. And our response to pressure is to turn it right back around.

[Nick Statt]

We have to take another short break. We'll be back in just a minute.

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[Nick Statt]

I'm Mitch, first two time Indigocel champion, championship MVP and forward for the US Women's National Team.

[Nilay Patel]

Before I went pro, I graduated from Harvard with a degree in psychology, which

[Nick Statt]

comes in handy more than you think.

[Nilay Patel]

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[Nick Statt]

certain mentality you have to have. What people don't know is what that costs. In my podcast, Confessions of an Elite Athlete, I sit down with the best athletes in the world and explore the psychology, mindset and unseen battles on the path to greatness.

[Nilay Patel]

So take a seat and learn from the Confessions of an elite athlete on

[Nick Statt]

YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. I'm Decoder Senior Producer Nick Statt, Making Nilay answer your questions about how Decoder and the Verge cover AI. The last time we did a mailbag episode, we got a lot of feedback about AI. How the Verge covers it, how we cover it here on Decoder when We talk to CEOs, how we approach AI coverage in our Explainer episodes with reporters like Hayden Field. The last time we got that feedback, a lot of it was like, oh, you're not hard enough on AI. You need to go harder. But we've noticed something interesting in the last three, four, five months, which is that we're starting to see a lot of mixed feedback around AI, especially people saying we're too critical or we're fixating on the wrong perspectives. You know, it's not a bubble, or, you know, people are actually using it now. Companies are token maxing. There's Claude code, there's open claw, there's all this stuff happening. AI is changing. Neil, I know you're thinking about AI coverage is evolving all of the time. How are you thinking about it right now, especially for Decoder? Are we fixating too much on questions like whether the industry is a bubble or whether there's mainstream appeal or product market fit for this technology? How is that thinking evolving?

[Nilay Patel]

I have really mixed feelings on how to cover AI, and it is really related to all of the polling we're constantly talking about where regular people are encountering it more and more, and they're hating it more and more, and they're not being shy about it. And I really take to heart that Decoder is the business show that sits on top of a big consumer tech website. So the the Verge isn't, as a publication, is very much for consumers. That's what we cover here. We don't do a lot of enterprise tech coverage on the Verge. We focus relentlessly on technology and how it makes regular people feel. Decoder is a business show. Right. I'm asking CEOs what their. Org charts look like. That is very far from anything any consumer cares about. And I think understanding how the companies and the people think really helps you understand the products. So that when we do the product coverage, we get a really interesting feedback loop where I understand the businesses that built the products, and I think that's reflected in the products. And then I can come back around and you hear me do it on decoder all the time and say, also, we run a giant reviews program. We use your products, and I think your products are bad. And that is. It's hard to find that dynamic anywhere else. I think that's honestly what makes the Verge unique and what makes the relationship between Decoder and the Verge unique, specifically as applied to AI. I think for a long time we were using the products and they just couldn't do the things the company said they could do. You can use free ChatGPT all day and all night. And if you have an ounce of like, self reflection, you will say to yourself, this is not alive. Like, it's just prompting me to ask it another question at the end of every response. And I don't see how you get from here to this thing can run an entire business. To this thing will attain sentience. To this thing will be AGI. Like you can just look at the product and see it doesn't work. David Pierce recently just reviewed the Starbucks integration in ChatGPT and the thing is a miserable failure. Okay, we can just look at the products and see what they are and see the promises these companies are making and ask very directly, are those promises being kept? And I think on the consumer side, the answer is manifestly no. They cannot do the things they've promised consumers they can do. I think that is very much why consumers are turning on AI. They're not getting the value, but they're getting all the demands. The thing that has changed, and I think this is the reason the feedback is getting mixed, is on decoder particularly. We have a business audience. It's a business show, it has a business audience. And there is real product market fit for AI in the enterprise. You can see what Anthropic's revenues look like. You can see OpenAI basically sloughing off every consumer thing it was doing, including Sora, and trying to focus heavily on Codex and enterprise use of AI. And there's a lot to be said for that. I, I think a lot of business processes should be automated. I think having agents run around and do things inside your business so that people can, real people can do actual tasks of higher value is. That's great. I think the cutting edge of marketing is automation in some way. I think it's going to be really weird for a lot of people, but it's happening and you can't deny that it's happening. You can't deny that AI has found uses here and some of them will fall flat and some of them will succeed and that will be really interesting to cover. So that's where I think the mixed opinions come from, is that if you're looking at one part of the market, you say, oh, AI has a lot of value to offer here, but then you kind of take the jump. And I think we've recently heard Jensen Huang say AGI is already here. Jason Calcanis has said AGI is already here. And what they are describing is it can write software, it can automate some business process, which means maybe you can run a company all by yourself. AGI is here. That's pure nonsense to me. And I think the thing that I'm looking at a lot is where is the product, the AI product that people love that actually changes their minds? And to me that product doesn't exist. So I think we're going to hammer on that divide pretty hard in the years to come here.

[Nick Statt]

That relates to a comment we got from a reader, Chris. He says he thinks the AI polling is bad shtick lately on Decoder and Vergecast is underrating how much 1 he cannot trust images or video anymore, 2 it's this is really bad right now, 3 it's easy to understand that is genuinely apocalyptic in the near future and apocalypse looms large in American imagination and four, those bad outcomes are the fault of gestures broadly toward AI. So he's saying not only is there no good consumer AI product, but that the consumer AI products that do exist are a threat to the social contract in real and immediate, immediately obvious ways. Obviously, you know, you mentioned the the AI polling around Gen Z. It's manifesting in some very dark ways. There have been attacks on politicians, attacks on Sam Altman's home, a lot of pressure mounting against data centers pushing back on AI executives claiming that they're going to create more jobs, not destroy them. And then some AI executives of course, just plainly saying we're going to destroy all jobs. How is this affecting how you think about talking to people about AI on decoder particular particularly tech leaders and people who are working on this technology?

[Nilay Patel]

One, I think I want to make sure, I keep asking them if the technology as it's constituted today can actually do all of the things they say it's going to do. I don't think that answer is clear at all. You can listen to Yann Lecun, who used to be the head of AI at Meta, who got pushed out of Meta for saying he didn't think LL could get to AGI. He's still out there saying it. The latest argument that I've heard him make is it you can't have an agentic system that's taking action for itself when it can't know or predict the consequences of its actions. And that's just sort of the nature of the LLM, right? It's going to do stuff and see what happens. But like true intelligence is going to take repeated actions in a way that is predictable, just like you and I would take actions and know what's going to happen next. The LLMs are sort of reacting on first impression all the time. That's A big conversation you can go have and maybe you can build some affordances to, to get around that sort of inherent fact of an LLM. But I think there's a bigger debate in this field than anyone wants to to acknowledge because the market opportunity for the tools we have now is huge. So you have to say it's going to do the next thing. And the next thing, the next thing I, I want to keep pushing on that. I, I don't think that is settled at all. And I think making people say out loud what they actually think the technology can do and what its important. The second thing I want to make sure we keep doing is talking about the polling, talking about the fact that this industry is demanding so much from everyone, all of the power, all of the land, every stick of RAM in history for what? And it really cannot be we've automated marketing it, it just can't. It has to be something better than that. And I, I, I, I, I keep saying it and I know people argue with me a million ways about this but ChatGPT has what, 900 million weekly users. Gemini is everywhere. If you just like blink at a Google product, Claude is famous now for a lot of people because it is now also a political story. Everybody has seen slop on their Facebook feeds. People are aware of this technology. They have made up their minds. You cannot market your way out of this problem. You cannot advertise people out of their honest reactions to what you're putting in front of them. And unless you have a product that can overcome it, I don't think you're going to change the hearts and minds. And there is not a product that regular people are using every day that they feel like love for that overcomes this. You know, I can give a lot of examples here. Uber. You can list all of the policy criticisms people have had with Uber for years and years. There are labor concerns with Uber, there are safety concerns with Uber. One point, Uber was getting banned in various cities. People really liked the product. They were able to overcome it because the product was compelling and drivers like the product. As Uber will tell you over and over and over again, some drivers don't want to be full time employees. They like the flexibility to the point when Uber had regulatory problems. They were putting ads in the app asking people to lobby their local politicians. This is a product that was compelling enough to make people take political action in a way that AI is a product that is anti, compelling enough to make people take anti political action. And I, I, there's a long list of products like this, you can overcome the policy objections, the societal objections, if your product is compelling. And I just do not think there is a consumer AI product that people feel good about at the level that rises to the, the kinds of demands this industry is making. And you can't be like, this is great for business. I don't think that's going to do it.

[Nick Statt]

Okay, we've got a few questions left. Neil. I will do these in more of like a lightning round style about the current structure of the show and what to expect in the future. One question here from Joe Rodricks is that he really enjoys the occasional episode where Nilai is really fired up. He says, I would love for you to consider a periodic debate style podcast where two people's views are pitted against each other. I know you've joked about starting a YouTube debate show at some points. Do you think this format works? How are you thinking about formats and the structure of Decoder itself?

[Nilay Patel]

We did one debate on Decoder at the very beginning. It was a bitcoin debate. It was a very pro bitcoin executive, obviously, and then a very anti bitcoin professor. And they weren't in the same room. I was sort of moderating them by asking the same questions to each. And then we edited it all together and it was fairly interesting. Maybe we should do that more. I think the pure debate shows, I. I think I sort of side with John Stewart on this. I. I think they're bad for society. I just, I'm thinking about Jon Stewart talking to Tucker Carlson and Alan Combs and being like, you're hurting America. Like, stop it. Those shows rely on performance. They do not rely on substance. And so, you know, you can watch any random jubilee episode and it all comes down to how compelling is the person in the chair, not, are they saying smarter things than the other person? And I like that people think that I'm interesting enough to, like, hold one side of a date. My job is not to, like, advocate positions in that way. I think we have some clear values, which in America in 2026 feels like I'm advocating for stuff because we live in a crazy time. But I'm just trying to ask questions and learn what people are doing and how they're doing it. Sometimes what I'm saying is, hey, have you thought about making your platform less racist? And that feels like I'm advocating, like, really hard and being really fired up. Have you thought about not stealing everything from everyone all the time? That is, like, table stakes for me. Maybe we should do more debates where I'm the moderator. But I think it gets weird if I'm the one taking a position. And I really have watched a lot of those debate shows show up on YouTube and it feels like what people are getting out of it is performance, not substance.

[Nick Statt]

That segues perfectly into a question here at the end that I just personally wrote myself because I'm curious what your answer is. You have a decoder book in the works. You recently announced it. It's called how to get what you want. Why is that the title of the forthcoming Decoder book?

[Nilay Patel]

That title is a little bit of a joke. I think it's a fun title. It is just what I say to my 8 year old daughter all the time. She asked me for something, I say, are you going to get what you want? Like what's your plan? So that's the title, the book I've been thinking about since we started Decoder. And I've said this before, but you know, when you, when you start a podcast and the premise is, I'm going to interview a CEO every week, that is just a forever project. There's no end date to that project. You can't mark any sort of success or failure. It just goes on forever as long as people are listening. And that's a weird way to do things. So I wanted to have some kind of marker, some goal. And that's why we structured the decoder questions as they are. That's why I ask everybody how they make decisions. It's why I ask everybody how their companies are structured. Because my feeling was that if I could get enough of those answers, I could find enough commonalities. And then when my niece and nephew graduate from college, which they're going to do next year, I could tell them how businesses work because they're going to graduate college in a really weird time and all of these kids are going to go off into their first jobs. And I don't know what that job market looks like, especially now with AI and none of these companies hold on to anyone for longer than 25 minutes. Like no one's going to get trained. And I was like, I should just make an instruction manual. And so the, you know, one of the chapters of the book is, is just a decoder trip. If you tell me how your company is structured, I can tell you 80% of its problems. I know that. I've proven that. I think on the show, I think decoder listeners know that, yeah, that last 20% is really important. That's the rest of the hour. But if you just say what is the org chart like? You can get a pretty basic understanding of where the priorities and the tensions of a company are. I've talked to a lot of CEOs, I've asked a lot of very similar questions. We have tropes inside of our show. Can I package that up and hand it to people and have them feel a sense of agency about what they're doing in their professional lives? And so it's called how to get what you want because I want people to feel empowered. I think a lot of institutions are going to be torn down by the time this book comes out and a lot of young people with idealism and ideas are not going to have had the experiences of running anything. So can I just hand people a cheat code? Right, like here's, here's how it goes. It's all the companies are the same. Like they're all, they're all functional or divisional. If you listen to Decoder, you know these answers. If you have a boss and they don't know the answer to the question, how do you make decisions? You should quit your job. It's like as flat out as I can tell you, like there are answers to that question. We've heard a lot of them. So that's the idea of the book. But how to get what you want is very much just me saying to my 8 year old daughter, how are you going to get what you want? What's your plan?

[Nick Statt]

So for the final question today, Nilay, who are your moonshot guests this year for Decoder? Is it Apple's John Ternus? Is it Sam Altman and Dario Amade? Still Palantir CEO Alex Karp, who do you most want on the show?

[Nilay Patel]

We're working on Sam, we're working on Dario. I hope they come through. Like I said, it's a game you can win. It's also a game you can lose. I think everyone's very aware of that and they're cruising towards IPOs, so I think they're, they're pretty risk averse. They also love being on podcasts. So if you know these guys, tell them this is the most fun one to be on. I've joked for years that I've never even asked for Tim Cook because he, I don't think I can win media training. I really don't. I've met John Ternus. He is pretty relaxed. He likes making products, he likes talking about products. Maybe, maybe once he actually becomes the CEO later in the year, we can, we can make that ass. That'd be great. Alex Karp I think would be just the funniest episode of the show. We should ask for that. But I'm also looking very much for guests who are using AI tools, in particular in ways to actually run their businesses. I think we've heard a lot from the model companies. We have not heard a lot from a new generation of business leaders who are actually using these tools in interesting ways that aren't just replacing jobs. I know they're out there. I'm just very curious to talk about them and talk about what it really means to use these tools in the enterprise setting where I think they've found product market fit.

[Nick Statt]

So I think that's a great place to end it. Nilay, thank you for coming back on Decoder.

[Nilay Patel]

You're very welcome. I should hang up in a rage just so people can see what it's like. That's the danger of every episode.

[Nick Statt]

Yeah, you're allowed to walk out whenever you want. I'd like to thank Nilay for taking the time to make his own show and thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed it. It if you'd like to let us know what you thought about this show or what else you'd like us to cover, drop us a line. You can email us at Decoder the Verge the team really does read every email. Or you can hit up Neelie directly on Threads or Bluesky. We're also on YouTube. You can watch full episodes at DecoderPod. We also have a TikTok and an Instagram. They're @DecoderPod2 and they're a lot of fun. If you like Decoder, please share it with your friends and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Decoder is a production of the Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast network. The show is produced by Kate Cox and myself, Nick Stat, and it's edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. The Decoder Music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. See you next time.