Recode Decode, Hosted By Kara Swisher

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 M

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 | Ve

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 | Po

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

Almar Latour is the publisher of the Wall Street Journal and also CEO of its parent company, Dow Jones — itself a part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Almar's been with the paper since the 90s, and now he's got insight into all the modern messes. He's made a big deal with OpenAI, while also suing Perplexity — all while building his own AI data products for Dow Jones customers. He's also a strong defender of press freedom who fought to have Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich released from Russia after being imprisoned for more than a year — while News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch famously has deep ties to Trump and has overseen a vastly polarized and politicized era of news media. Links:  Here are the WSJ journalists whose jobs were eliminated | Talking Biz News OpenAI, WSJ parent strike content deal valued at over $250M | Wall Street Journal News Corp sues Perplexity for ripping off WSJ, New York Post | The Verge Dow Jones negotiates AI usage rights with 4,000 publishers | Nieman Lab Rup

So today I’m talking to Andy Hawkins, The Verge’s transportation editor, about what’s going on in the skies. Andy just edited a big piece for us by writer Darryl Campbell that helps put a lot of what’s happening in air travel right now in perspective. It has some very reassuring data points, but it also raises important questions about what we need to do next to reinstill confidence in air travel. Andy and I talked about how safe it really is to fly right now — extremely safe, it turns out — and how the current air traffic systems might change for better and worse. And, of course, we talked about Elon Musk. Links:  What’s the deal with all these airplane crashes? | Verge How Elon Musk muscled his way into the FAA | Bloomberg Elon Musk says upgrade of FAA’s air traffic control system is failing | CNN FAA targeting Verizon contract in favor of Musk’s Starlink, sources say | WashPo FAA officials ordered staff to find funding for Elon Musk’s Starlink | Rolling Stone FAA announces ‘hiring supercharge’

Panos Panay is in charge of devices and services at Amazon — that's everything from Alexa and Kindle to Ring, Eero, and even the Project Kuiper satellite internet service that's meant to compete with Starlink. He's led the team through giving Alexa a big AI infusion which is what drew him to Amazon after nearly 20 years with Microsoft. Like so many folks in tech, he sees AI as a platform shift that will change the way we use computers. Fair warning: We talk about Alexa a lot in this one, so you might want to go mute your Alexa device mics now. Links:  With Alexa Plus, Amazon finally reinvents its best product | Verge The future of the Kindle with Panos Panay | Vergecast Amazon announces AI-powered Alexa Plus | Verge All of the announcements from Amazon’s Alexa Plus event | Verge Alexa Plus arrives with promise but plenty of questions | Verge Amazon Leadership Principles | Amazon How Amazon runs Alexa, with Dave Limp (2021) | Decoder Alexa loses her voice | YouTube Humane is shutting down th

This is Alex Heath, deputy editor of The Verge. I’m guest hosting today’s episode while Nilay is still away for a much-needed vacation. He’ll be back next week. But today, we’re diving into the bromance between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and more specifically, how it’s impacting the changing right-wing political movement here in the United States.  There’s no better place to get that temperature check than CPAC. Musk showed up there this year for a wild interview — you may have seen clips of him waving around a literal chainsaw. Thankfully, Verge policy Gaby del Valle was on the ground this year, and as you’ll hear her say, she barely slept. But she got a front-row look at how the world of MAGA really feels about Elon, DOGE, and regulating Big Tech.  Links:  I cannot describe how strange Elon Musk’s CPAC appearance was | Verge At CPAC, the world’s populists parrot the leader who inspired them | Politico Government still threatening to ‘semi-fire’ workers who don’t answer Musk email | Verge Saying ‘n

Vimeo started many years ago as something of an artsier, more creative competitor to YouTube. Its last CEO, Anjali Sud, took the company through a pretty huge transformation into an enterprise software company, and we had her on the show to talk about that transformation a couple years ago. Now, her successor, new CEO Philip Moyer, not only has to decide what parts of that strategy are working, but also how to navigate the addition of AI to the mix, and deal with the basic math of the creator economy: The amount of video in the world is exploding, but the total amount of time a person can spend watching any of it is pretty fixed. So with AI adding to the volume, how is anyone going to be able to make any money at all? Links:  How Anjali Sud reinvented Vimeo | Decoder (2021) How Dropout is taking control with Vimeo OTT | Vimeo Squarespace CEO Anthony Casalena on making a website in 2023 | Decoder Wix CEO Avishai Abrahami on why the web isn’t dying | Decoder NBCU’s streaming chief isn’t worried about

This is David Pierce, editor-at-large at The Verge. Nilay is off this week for a much-deserved break. So I’m filling in for him, and the Decoder team thought this would be a good opportunity to switch gears a little bit from the political apocalypse beat and talk about something completely different. So today we’re diving into the video game industry and discussing a particular set of very thorny problems facing Microsoft and its Xbox division. I invited Ash Parrish, The Verge’s video game reporter, to discuss the issues facing Xbox, Microsoft’s big ambitions with its Game Pass subscription service, and why the game industry hasn’t had its Netflix or Spotify moment yet. Links:  Xbox continues its push beyond consoles with new ad campaign | Verge The next Xbox is going to be very different | Verge 2025 looks like a great year for Xbox | Verge Microsoft prepares to take Xbox everywhere | Verge Microsoft and Google are fighting over the future of Xbox | Verge Microsoft was the No.1 games publisher i

The First Amendment, protecting free speech and free media, is a pillar of US law. It is, famously, the first one. We don’t usually tolerate government interference with speech. So it’s been disconcerting these first few weeks of the second Trump administration to realize suddenly, there’s a nonzero chance the government will punish our work. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is absolutely determined to turn all that talk about the media being the enemy of the people into concrete legal action — incredibly serious, unprecedented attacks on free speech. Links:  Carr’s emerging agenda and its dangerous effects | Tech Policy Press Trump’s MAGA enforcer is having ‘the time of his life’ | The Daily Beast FCC to investigate Comcast for having DEI programs | The Verge Trump amends CBS ’60 Minutes’ lawsuit & demands $20 billion | LA Times No Apology Over Trump Lawsuit, ‘60 Minutes’ Top Producer Says | New York Times The FCC is investigating NPR and PBS | The Verge ABC News to pay $15 million to settle Trump de

Today, I’m talking with Senator Ron Wyden, a democrat and the senior senator from Oregon. He’s been in the Senate for almost 30 years, which makes him one of longest serving members of the institution. We scheduled this interview with Senator Wyden a while ago — he’s got a new book out called “It Takes Chutzpah: How to Fight Fearlessly for Progressive Change.”  But recent events made it vastly more important to talk about the state of our federal government – and specifically, what Elon Musk and DOGE are doing as they seize power in various federal agencies. So right up front and very bluntly, I wanted to ask Wyden: What is even going on? And can even he and his fellow senators keep up with it? Links:  It Takes Chutzpah | Hachette Book Group DOGE wreaked havoc on the government in just one week | Verge “For all practical purposes, I’d call that a coup.” | Verge Elon Musk’s presidency is just getting started | Decoder Elon Musk’s computer coup | Vergecast Can anyone stop President Musk? | Verge

Today, we’re discussing a very big problem with extremely far-reaching consequences: Do we still have a functional federal government here in the United States? And how much of it has been handed entirely to Elon Musk?  If you’ve been following the news, you know there’s a lot here that’s unfolding very fast, but I wanted to know how all these changes are affecting the people who’ve so far been the most newly supportive of Trump because they have the most to lose – the money, the billionaires. So I invited New York Times reporter Teddy Schleiffer, who’s been covering this closely every day since the inauguration, on the show to help break it down. Links:  Inside Musk's aggressive incursion into the federal government | NYT ‘The biggest heist in American history’: DC is just waking up to Musk’s takeover | Verge ‘Scared and betrayed’ — workers are reeling from chaos at federal agencies | Verge Treasury Department sued over DOGE takeover | Verge Can anyone stop President Musk? | Verge Elon Musk’s te

Andy Hunter is the CEO of Bookshop.org, a website he launched in 2020 that lets local bookshops sell all over the country. He always meant it to compete directly with Amazon, and the timing of that launch right into the teeth of the pandemic meant it was able to start strong and grow quickly. Now Bookshop is selling ebooks, which is another market hugely dominated by Amazon. For Andy and Bookshop to get what they want, they’re probably going to have to gear up for a big fight. It’s kind of the app store question all over again, just like the big cases Epic had against Apple and Google, and it's all prime Decoder territory. Links:  Bookshop is launching an ebook store to take on Amazon | The Verge As greenwashing soars, some question B Corp certification | BBC ‘The Goliath is Amazon’: After 100 years, B&N wants to go back to its roots | Decoder How Bookshop survives and thrives in Amazon’s world | Wired Apple to pay $450M after Supreme Court denies price-fixing appeal [2016] | The Verge Epic Game

Today, we’re talking about DeepSeek, and how the open source AI model built by a Chinese startup has completely upended the conventional wisdom around chatbots, what they can do, and how much they should cost to develop.  We’re also talking about Stargate, OpenAI’s new $500 billion data center venture that’s supposed to supercharge domestic AI infrastructure. Both stand in stark contrast with one another — and represent a new, escalating front in the US-China relationship and the geopolitics of AI. Verge senior AI reporter Kylie Robison joins me to break it all down.   Links:  Why everyone is freaking out about DeepSeek | Verge DeepSeek FAQ | Stratechery DeepSeek: all the news about the startup that’s shaking up AI stocks | Verge OpenAI and Softbank are starting a $500 billion AI data center company | Verge The AI spending frenzy is just getting started | Command Line After DeepSeek, VCs face questions about AI investments | NYT Satya Nadella on Stargate: ‘All I know is I’m good for my $80 bill

Today, I’m talking with Gary Smith, CEO of the networking company Ciena. You probably aren’t familiar with Ciena — the company isn’t really a household name. But every internet user has relied on the company’s products; Ciena makes the hardware and software that makes the fiber optic cables connecting the world light up with data.  That’s everything from local fiber networks for broadband ISPs to the massive undersea cables that connect continents. There’s a high probability that this very podcast came to you over a Ciena network, in fact — the company is everywhere. That means almost every single Decoder idea is right here, sitting on the backbone of the internet. Links:  What is WDM or DWDM? | Ciena Southern Cross achieves first 1 Tb/s Transmission across Pacific with Ciena | Ciena The invisible seafaring industry that keeps the internet afloat | Verge The internet really is a series of tubes | Vergecast Meta is building the ‘mother of all’ subsea cables | Verge Ciena CEO: Prepare for the AI wa

It’s been a messy couple of weeks for big tech companies as the second Trump administration kicks off an unprecedented era of how we think about who controls the internet. Right now, there's a major collision, or maybe merger, happening between billionaire power and state power, and everyone who uses tech to communicate — so, basically everyone — is stuck in the middle. I sat down with law professor and online speech expert Kate Klonick to break it all down.  Links:  Welcome to the era of gangster tech regulation | Verge Trump signs order refusing to enforce TikTok ban for 75 days | Verge Inside Zuckerberg’s sprint to remake Meta for Trump era | New York Times The internet’s future is looking bleaker by the day | Wired Meta is highlighting a splintering global approach to online speech | Verge Mark Zuckerberg lies about content moderation to Joe Rogan’s face | Verge Meta’s ‘tipping point’ is about aligning with power | WashPo Meta is preparing for an autocratic future | Tech Policy Press Met

Today, I’m talking with Matt Garman, the CEO of Amazon Web Services. Matt took over as CEO last June — you might recall that we had his predecessor Adam Selipsky on the show just over a year ago. That makes this episode terrific Decoder bait, since I love hearing how new CEOs will decide what to change and what to keep going after they’ve settled into their role. Links:  There’s no AI without the cloud, says AWS CEO Adam Selipsky | Decoder Amazon's AWS to invest $11 bln in Georgia to boost AI infrastructure | Reuters Netflix’s Ted Sarandos responds to Jake Paul-Mike Tyson glitches | THR The furious contest to unseat Nvidia as king of AI chips | NYT Amazon’s moonshot plan to rival Nvidia in AI chips | Bloomberg Amazon invests another $4 billion in Anthropic | The Verge Why Netflix never goes down | The Verge Sam Altman lowers the bar for AGI | The Verge Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/24102212 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Ou

Hello, Nilay here. We’re still on winter break; we’ll be back with brand-new Decoder interviews next week, and with our Thursday shows later this month. I’m excited for what we’ve got in the pipeline. I think you’re going to love it. For today, though, we’re sharing an episode of Peter Kafka’s new show Channels – he’s talking to disinformation researcher Renee DiResta about what’s going on with speech online in an era where platforms seem less inclined to moderate than ever. Peter’s an old friend and Renee is an expert on all this — there’s a lot of core Decoder themes in this one. Enjoy, and we’ll be back in a bit. Links:  Channels with Peter Kafka | Apple Podcasts The Stanford Internet Observatory is being dismantled | Platformer A major disinformation research center’s future looks uncertain | The Verge Supreme Court to hear case on how government talks to social platforms | The Verge GOP targets researchers who study disinformation ahead of 2024 Election | NYT She warned of ‘peer-to-peer misi

The Decoder team turns the tables on Nilay and makes him answer your burning listener questions in our end-of-year wrap up special. We also reflect on the year’s biggest Decoder themes, discuss some of the most popular feedback we’ve received, and tease what we have planned for next year.  Links:  Here we go: The Verge now has a subscription | The Verge How The Verge Works | The Vergecast Intuit asked us to delete part of this Decoder episode | Decoder What’s really behind Big Tech’s return-to-office mandates? | Decoder Rabbit CEO Jesse Lyu isn’t thinking too far ahead | Decoder Transparent Vice | The Verge UiPath CEO Daniel Dines thinks automation can fight the great resignation | Decoder Palmer Luckey, American Vulcan | Tablet  A revolution in how robots learn | The New Yorker 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 Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder m