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1. 

   4 Jun 2026 · 49 min

   Elon Musk is steamrolling Wall Street to become a trillionaire

   My guest today is Ryan Mac, a technology reporter at The New York Times and co-author of the excellent book Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, which came out in 2024. I wanted to have Ryan on today because we’re on the cusp of the SpaceX IPO, which promises to be one of the most consequential public offerings in history for a variety of reasons. Its biggest-ever size, of course, at nearly $2 trillion dollars. But also because all kinds of rules that keep our markets fair are being bent, if not outright broken, along the way. And, also because buried somewhere inside SpaceX is…

2. 

   1 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 6 min

   AI is blowing up music. How should the Grammys handle it?

   I last talked to Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr in 2024 — when it was obvious that generative AI would upend the music industry, but not exactly clear how that would happen. Now, Harvey says AI is “omnipresent” in music production. So what kinds of tools are musicians using, in what way, and what kind of music is it making for us? Is it any good? And how do we identify, and take care of, actual human musicians in this mess? Read the full interview transcript on The Verge. Links: Why the Grammys need to change, with CEO Harvey Mason Jr | Decoder Is ‘blue dot fever’ a real problem for…

3. 

   28 May 2026 · 1 hr 10 min

   Rivian's software chief thinks you don't need CarPlay or buttons

   Today, I’m talking with Wassym Bensaid, the chief software officer at Rivian, and the co-ceo of Rivian’s platform joint venture with Volkswagen. That joint venture, called RV Tech, is about a year and a half old, so I wanted to ask Wassym how it all works and Rivian’s ongoing relationship with Volkswagen. Because it’s Rivian, I also had to ask Wassym about CarPlay. But the company also just launched an AI-powered voice assistant, which I got to try early. So I had a lot of fun digging into that with Wassym, too. This is a fun one – really in the weeds of a lot of my favorite things to talk…

4. 

   26 May 2026 · 51 min

   How Sundar Pichai is rethinking Google for the AI era

   Connecting with Google CEO Sundar Pichai at I/O every year is one of my favorite Decoder traditions. This was our fifth year doing it, and there’s always a whole slew of new things to talk about. This year, in addition to the news, we talked about Google Zero; picking fights with YouTube creators and publishers; and what being at “the foothills of the singularity" even means. Read the full interview transcript on The Verge. Links: If Google can’t make AI agents useful, maybe no one can | The Verge The future of Google is a search box that does everything | The Verge Large language mistake |…

5. 

   21 May 2026 · 34 min

   Musk v Altman: Much ado about nothing

   Musk v Altman was nominally about OpenAI's conversion to a for-profit entity, and how it went about that change. But really, the suit seems mostly to have been about Elon Musk being mad at Sam Altman — or at OpenAI, for being successful without him — and wanting him punished in some way. Verge reporter Liz Lopatto spent the last month covering the trial, in all its chaos, and joins Decoder to ask: In a courtroom full of untrustworthy, unreliable people all fighting with each other, did anyone even have a reputation left to lose? Read the full interview transcript on The Verge. Links: Elon…

6. 

   14 May 2026 · 55 min

   How companies weaponize the terms of service against you

   Brendan Ballou is founder of the Public Integrity Project and author of the new book, When Companies Run the Courts, about the rise of forced arbitration. Forced arbitration is similarly everywhere in modern life, and there have been some very high-profile cases these past few years highlighting how deeply unfair these clauses are to consumers. Brendan’s book delves into how and why we got here — spoiler: we can blame Antonin Scalia for some of it — but also, most importantly, how we may be able to fight back in the future. Read the full interview transcript on The Verge. Links: When…

7. 

   11 May 2026 · 1 hr

   Joanna Stern is not a robot, but she lived with them

   My guest today is longtime friend of the show Joanna Stern. You all know Joanna: she is the former senior personal technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal, a former Decoder guest host, one of my co-founders at The Verge, and also just one of my very closest friends. Joanna just left that lofty perch at the Journal to start her own media company called New Things, and she’s starting with her new book about AI called I Am Not a Robot, which is out this week on May 12th. So we had Joanna on to talk about all of that, especially what she learned going all in on automation. Read the full…

8. 

   7 May 2026 · 42 min

   Rewind: How AI is fueling an existential crisis in education

   Hey, everyone, Nilay here. We’re off today, while the team and I are cooking on a lot of really great stuff in the coming weeks. We’ll be back with an all-new interview on Monday. In the meantime, we really wanted to highlight this episode we first aired in the fall, because it’s about a huge subject: AI in schools. The school year is starting to wrap up now around the country, and we’re no closer to figuring out how to thread the needle about generative AI in education than we were in September. Links: A majority of high school students use gen AI for schoolwork | College Board About a…

9. 

   4 May 2026 · 1 hr 14 min

   Dara Khosrowshahi on replacing Uber drivers — and himself — with AI

   It’s become an annual tradition to have Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi join us in the studio when he comes to New York for Uber’s big Go-Get event every year. This year, the big news was that Uber's expanding into a much larger platform for travel, starting with hotel booking and services like personal shopping. Uber is going so far as to call this an everything app, so I wanted to see how far Dara thinks everything actually goes — and whether he’s feeling pressure to own more of the user experience in a world where AI companies keep promising that their chatbots will book all the cars for you.…

10. 

    30 Apr 2026 · 45 min

    How to win — or lose — Decoder

    This is Nick Statt, senior producer on Decoder. We last ran a mailbag episode during the holidays, and we decided it was a good idea to do that kind of thing more often. So we’re back with Nilay as the guest, answering questions and responding to feedback, criticism, and suggestions. We talk through some recent controversial episodes like our interviews with the CEOs of Superhuman and Puck, and we also discuss how we’re covering AI, thinking about the future of the show, and what it takes to win (and lose) Decoder. Links: Nilay answers your burning Decoder questions | Decoder Mailbag (2025)…