Recode Decode, Hosted By Kara Swisher

Bluesky has really taken off since the election, and since the Decoder team took some time off for Thanksgiving break, we felt it was a great time to bring back the interview we did earlier this year with Jay Graber, the CEO of Bluesky, the upstart competitor to Meta’s Threads and the platform formerly known as Twitter.  At the time, Bluesky was a pretty small platform. It had just reached 5 million users when Jay and I spoke. But since the election, Bluesky’s growth has absolutely skyrocketed to more than 20 million users, and it's starting to put real competitive pressure on Threads at the feature level. As Bluesky really ramps up, it seemed like a great time to engage with some of the core questions behind its design and see if Jay and her team can keep it up. Links:  Twitter’s heir apparent isn’t X or Threads — it’s Bluesky | The Verge Bluesky now has more than 20 million users | The Verge Bluesky moves deeper into moderation hell | The Verge Twitter is funding research into a decentralized versi

I spoke with GoDaddy CEO Aman Bhutani live on stage last week at an event hosted by Alix Partners in Palo Alto. GoDaddy is one of those companies that feels tied to an earlier era, but Aman’s been CEO since 2019, and he’s been building out what he calls adjacencies. The business of the web has really changed in the past few years: the walled-garden, social network era really took over in the past decade, and now huge changes to Google Search and the addition of generative AI have really put a massive strain on the very foundations of the open web. So I started out by asking Aman the question I’ve asked so many other guests on Decoder in the past year: What is the point of a website in 2024? Links:  If GoDaddy can turn the corner on sexism, who can’t? | New York Times (2017) Google Zero is here – now what? | Decoder Five for the Future – GoDaddy | WordPress.org 2024 is shaping up to be the smallest Black Friday ever | GoDaddy GoDaddy’s mission to get entrepreneurs up and running fast | Forbes GoDa

For nearly 20 years now, the web has been Google’s platform; we’ve all just lived on it. Google is constantly changing that platform — it launched another attempt to combat ‘parasite SEO’ just this week — and not all of those changes have worked well. Earlier this year I talked to a lot of people who have built on that platform. For a lot of small businesses and content creators, that’s suddenly not stable anymore. The number one question I have for anyone building things on someone else’s platform is: What are you going to do when that platform changes the rules? Links:  Google is cracking down on sites publishing parasite SEO content | The Verge How Google is killing independent sites like ours | HouseFresh HouseFresh has virtually disappeared from Google results. Now what? | HouseFresh Google Is Killing Retro Dodo & Other Independent Sites | Retro Dodo Google CEO Sundar Pichai on AI-powered search and the future of the web | The Verge Will AI break the internet? Or save it? | The New York Time

Hey everyone, it’s Nilay — Decoder is on a short break this week. We’ll be back with a special live interview episode on Monday of next week, and then regular programming will resume in December. I’m very excited for what we have coming up on the schedule.  But while we’re out, we’d like to highlight a great episode of a new podcast from our friends over at Vox called Explain It To Me. On this episode, host Jonquilyn Hill and her team tackle a decision that looms large for a lot of young people in America: How and when should you start saving for retirement — and will it even matter in a future of big, often scary uncertainties about work in the age of AI and the climate crisis?  Links:  Explain It To Me | Apple Podcasts Will the world end before I can retire? | Vox Vox launches Explain It to Me franchise to answer audience questions | Explain It To Me The doomers are wrong about humanity’s future — and its past | Vox Against doomerism | Vox End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World | Brya

Today we’re talking about Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Tesla — and I have to say, it feels like the first of many episodes about these three characters that we’ll be doing over the course of the next four years. Because when Elon used his wealth and influence to help Trump get elected, he also bought himself a seat at the president-elect’s inner circle. But what does the world’s richest person really want in return? And how is the CEO of an electric car company, an outspoken advocate for combating climate change, going to square his support for Trump and a Republican policy agenda centered on climate change denial? Verge transportation editor Andy Hawkins joins me this week to make sense of it all, and to figure out how Elon and Tesla may still benefit, even if Trump's climate policy reversals and tariffs lay waste to the auto industry. Links:  What does Trump’s election mean for EVs, Tesla, and Elon Musk? | The Verge This election will decide what kind of car you’ll buy | The Verge Trump says Musk wi

Harvey Mason, Jr is CEO of the Recording Academy, the nonprofit organization most famous for the Grammy Awards. We spoke right before this year's Grammy nominations came out, and you'll hear us talk a whole lot about the changes he's tried to make with how the awarding membership works. I always say to watch what’s happening to the music industry because it’s a preview into what will happen to every other creative industry five years later. My chat with Harvey really drove the point home: AI, diversity, streaming distribution... it's all here, and all the tensions that come with. Links:  2025 Grammy nominations: The complete list | NPR The Grammys Move From CBS To Disney In Major 10-Year Deal | Deadline Recording Academy boots Grammy voters | Los Angeles Times Chappell Roan and the problem with fandom | Vox Grammys CEO: Music that contains AI-created elements is eligible | AP News Deborah Dugan Grammys Controversy: What to Know | Time For Taylor Swift, the Future of Music Is a Love Story | Wal

Today, we’re talking about work. Specifically, where we work, how our expectations of working remotely were radically changed by the pandemic, and how those expectations feel like they’re on the verge of changing yet again. For many people, the pendulum has swung wildly between working fully remote and now a push to return to the office from their bosses, and there are a lot of theories about what might really be motivating big companies to try and bring everyone back. To explain it, I caught up with two experts on the subject: Stephan Meier, a professor of business strategy at Columbia Business School, and Jessica Kriegel, the chief strategy officer at workplace culture consultancy Culture Partners. We dive into what’s been happening to the nature of work today, and whether Amazon, which just announced a major return to the office five days a week, is part of a bigger trend.  Links: Amazon is making its employees come back to the office five days a week | The Verge Amazon CEO denies 5-day office mandate

Today, I’m talking with Baris Cetinok, who is in charge of all the software in the cars that GM makes, which is a lot of cars. And if you’ve been following any of the drama in the world of car software, you know it also means Baris is the guy who has to defend GM’s decision to drop Apple CarPlay and Android Auto from most of its cars, especially EVs.  I’ve had versions of this conversation with the CEOs of car companies before, but Baris is in charge of actually building this stuff. So we really got into the weeds here on what this looks like, the major trade-offs, and why he thinks it’s ultimately the right path for GM.  Links:  GM names new leaders of software organization | The Detroit News GM is cutting off access to Apple CarPlay & Android Auto for its future EVs | The Verge Will GM Regret Kicking Apple CarPlay off the Dashboard? | Bloomberg Rivian CEO: CarPlay isn’t going to happen | Decoder Volvo CEO thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake | Decoder GM Ultifi software platform will roll out i

Trump and a bunch of billionaires, like Elon Musk, are calling for the FCC to punish TV stations by revoking their licenses and using the spectrum for other stuff. In a normal world, this would be idle billionaire wishcasting. Punishing news organizations is one of those things we have a First Amendment to protect against. You know — the one that protects free speech by prohibiting the government from making speech regulations or punishing people for what they say?   But, it turns out, there is a long and complex history of the government regulating speech on broadcast platforms like radio and television — and that history dovetails into many of the problems we have regulating tech companies and social platforms today. Verge senior tech and policy editor Adi Robertson joins me to dive in. Links:  The Verge guide to the 2024 US presidential election | The Verge FCC chair rejects Trump’s call to revoke CBS license over Harris interview | The Verge Florida official who resigned after letter to TV stations

Today, I’m talking with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, who is only the second person to be on Decoder three times — the other is Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Brian made a lot of waves earlier this year when he started talking about something called “founder mode,” or at least, when well-known investor Paul Graham wrote a blog post about Brian’s approach to running Airbnb that gave it that name. Founder mode has since become a little bit of a meme, and I was excited to have Brian back on to talk about it, and what specifically he thinks it means. Talking to Brian is a ride, but I think I held my own, and I think you’ll really like this one. Links: Founder Mode | Paul Graham Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky is taking it back to basics (2023) | Decoder Why the future of work is the future of travel, with Airbnb’s Brian Chesky (2021) | Decoder Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky: ‘I Never Called it Founder Mode’ | Skift Why Silicon Valley is abuzz over ‘Founder Mode’ | NYT After Apple, Jony Ive Is Building an Empire of His Own |

Today, we’re going to try and figure out "digital god." I figured we’ve been doing Decoder long enough, let’s just get after it. Can we build an artificial intelligence so powerful it changes the world and answers all our questions? The AI industry has decided the answer is yes.  In September, OpenAI’s Sam Altman published a blog post claiming we’ll have superintelligent AI in “a few thousand days.” And earlier this month, Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic published a 14,000-word post laying out what he thinks such a system will be capable of when it does arrive, which he says could be as soon as 2026. Verge senior AI reporter Kylie Robison joins me on the show to break it all down.  Links:  Machines of Loving Grace | Dario Amodei The Intelligence Age | Sam Altman Anthropic’s CEO thinks AI will lead to a utopia | The Verge AI manifestos flood the tech zone | Axios OpenAI just raised $6.6 billion to build ever-larger AI models | The Verge OpenAI was a research lab — now it’s just another tech com

Today’s episode, well — it’s a ride. I’m talking to Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi, who’s built Intuit into a juggernaut business software company in part through a series of major acquisitions: TurboTax, MailChimp, CreditKarma, and loads more. There’s a lot of good Decoder material there, and we get into it.  But it’s TurboTax, and the company’s tax lobbying efforts to protect it, that really drives a major narrative about Intuit, for better and worse. So you can bet I asked Sasan about all this, and it got a bit contentious. In fact, the company's chief communications officer even demanded we delete a portion of this interview over an exchange with Sasan on TurboTax. Don’t worry — we don’t do that here at The Verge. So expect to hear that section right up top, with the rest of the interview following after. Links: Inside TurboTax’s 20-year fight to stop Americans from filing taxes for free| ProPublica TurboTax deliberately hid free file page from Google Search | ProPublica TurboTax maker Intuit spent mill

Today’s episode is a little different: Digitas CEO Amy Lanzi and I recorded this conversation live on stage during advertising week in New York City at an event graciously hosted by Adweek.  I've actually been dying to talk to Amy. Digitas is one of the most important agencies in the entire advertising business with huge clients and massive influence over big platforms like Instagram and YouTube. After all, they're the ones buying the ads that keep all of those companies afloat. As you'd expect, she has a lot of thoughts about influencers, creators, AI, and everything that is going to change the advertising industry in the months and years to come. Links:  Publicis Groupe acquires influencer-marketing giant Influential | Marketing Dive Epsilon has first Digital CDP to provide native omni-channel activation | Epsilon Stagwell is on the hunt for adtech as the ad company continues its acquisition spree | BI Emma Chamberlain Is the People’s Influencer | Allure Inside the World of Sephora Squad | Mark

Luis von Ahn is the co-founder and CEO of Duolingo. There are lots of opportunities to enhance a product like Duolingo with AI, and we talk about all that — but I also wanted to talk to Luis about learning, generally. Duolingo is a global product, and there are a lot of tech tensions there, dealing with different user needs worldwide. We talk about it all in a pretty direct way... including all those unhinged things the owl does on social media. Links:  Duolingo Introduces AI-Powered Innovations at Duocon 2024 (Duolingo) Video Call with Lily (Duolingo / YouTube) AI Boosts Duolingo As Company Posts First Profit (Nasdaq) Foreign Language Training (US State Department) Exploring My Villain Origin Story (Duolingo / TikTok) Duolingo cuts workers as it relies more on AI (The Washington Post) Why Silicon Valley Is Talking About Founder Mode (The New York Times) Duolingo's Math and Music lessons finally hit Android a year after iOS (Android Police) Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on taking it back to basic

I’m talking with my good friend David Pierce, Vergecast co-host and The Verge’s editor-at-large, about something he spends an ungodly amount of time thinking and writing about: software. Scores of new workplace apps are cropping with clever metaphors to try to make us work differently. Sometimes that works… and sometimes it really, really doesn’t. And it feels like the addition of AI to the mix will accelerate the pace of experimentation here in pretty radical ways. Links:  Why software is eating the world | Wall Street Journal (2011) Mailchimp CEO Rania Succar on why email makes sense for Intuit | The Verge Why would anyone make a website in 2023? | The Verge Wix CEO Avishai Abrahami isn’t worried AI will kill the web | The Verge Figma CEO Dylan Field is optimistic about AI | The Verge We don’t sell saddles here | Stewart Butterfield (2014) The CEO of Zoom wants AI clones in meetings | The Verge Dropbox CEO Drew Houston wants you to embrace AI | The Verge Credits: Decoder is a productio

Rabbit’s adorable R1 gadget launched with a lot of hype, but early reviews of the device were universally bad. Now, a core feature, its long-promised LAM Playground has arrived. I had a lot of big questions for CEO Jesse Lyu about how it all works — not just technologically, but if his plans are sustainable from a business and legal perspective.  Links:  Rabbit R1 review: an unfinished, unhelpful AI gadget | The Verge Loopholes aren’t a technology | Buzzfeed News (2012) I tested Rabbit R1's next generation LAM — and it tried to gaslight me | Tom’s Hardware I tried Rabbit's LAM Playground, and I'm still disappointed | Android Authority Rabbit's AI bot will try to help you do anything (keyword is 'try') | Fast Company Rabbit’s web-based ‘large action model’ agent arrives on R1 October 1 | TechCrunch Rabbit R1 founder defends “unfinished” AI gadget | City AM AI hardware is in its flip-phone phase | Fast Company The iPhone 16 will ship as a work in progress | The Verge Humane AI Pin review: No

Today, I’m talking to Jason Schreier, a Bloomberg journalist and author of the new book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment. If you don’t know Blizzard, you do know its games — the studio behind Warcraft, Diablo, and Overwatch has achieved legendary status over three decades. At the same time, the company has become emblematic of many of gaming’s biggest failings. Jason’s book is out on October 8th, and it’s an incredible, detailed accounting of how Blizzard started, grew into a hitmaker and, eventually, became a victim of its own mismanagement. Oh, and there are a series of chaotic acquisitions along the way, culminating in Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard last year. In this episode, Jason and I get into all of this and more.  Links:  Play Nice: The Rise, Fall and Future of Blizzard Entertainment | Hachette  How Blizzard’s canceled MMO Titan fell apart | Polygon Blizzard was built on crunch, co-founder says, but it’s ‘not sustainable’ | Polygon Inside Activision

Matt Strauss is the Chairman of Direct-to-Consumer at NBC Universal. That’s a big fancy title that means he’s not only in charge of Peacock but also every other streaming video offering the company has worldwide. So you can bet Matt and I got into what that structure even looks like, and how it all operates under the overall ownership of Comcast, which is in the middle of its own massive transition as its traditional cable TV business continues to fade. There’s a lot in this one – tech, media, sports, and culture, all at once. It’s quite a ride. Links:  Comcast's new DVR ditches the hard drive, stores your recordings in the cloud (The Verge, 2013) Comcast and Charter Lost Another 269,000 Broadband Customers Last Quarter (The Motley Fool) It's official, people aren't watching TV as much as they used to (The Verge) The future of TV is up in the air (The Verge) Peacock Quarterly Loss Narrows to $348M as Subscribers Drop to 33M (THR) OTA and free online video drives higher US TV-video viewing hours (

We have a very special episode of Decoder today. It’s become a tradition every fall to have Verge deputy editor Alex Heath interview Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the show at Meta Connect. This year, before his interview with Mark, Alex got to try a new pair of experimental AR glasses the company is calling Orion.  Alex talked to Mark about a whole lot more, including why the company is investing so heavily in AR, why he's shifted away from politics, Mark's thoughts on the link between teen mental health and social media, and why the Meta chief executive is done apologizing for corporate scandals like Cambridge Analytica that he feels were overblown and misrepresented.   Links: Hands-on with Orion, Meta’s first pair of AR glasses | The Verge The biggest news from Meta Connect 2024 | The Verge Mark Zuckerberg: publishers ‘overestimate the value’ of their work for training AI | The Verge Meta extends its Ray-Ban smart glasses deal beyond 2030 | The Verge The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses actually make th

Today, I’m talking with Josh Miller, co-founder and CEO of The Browser Company, a relatively new software maker that develops the Arc browser. The company also has a mobile app called Arc Search that does AI summaries of webpages, which puts it right in the middle of a contentious debate in the tech industry around paying web creators for their work.  We’ve been talking about these topics pretty much nonstop for last year here on Decoder. So I was really excited to have Josh on the show to explore why he built Arc, what he hopes it will accomplish, and what might happen to browsers, search engines, and the web itself as these trends evolve.  Links:  Researcher reveals ‘catastrophic’ security flaw in the Arc browser | The Verge The Arc browser is the Chrome replacement I’ve been waiting for | The Verge Arc’s mobile browser is here — and it’s not really a web browser at all | The Verge Arc is getting better bookmarks and search results, all thanks to AI | The Verge Arc Search combines browser, search