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1. 

   20 Aug 2026 · 41 min

   Welcome to the AI crisis in math

   My guest today is Robert Hart, The Verge’s London-based AI reporter. Robert recently wrote a fantastic story for us about the debate raging inside the world of mathematics — and the existential crisis over what it means that new frontier AI models have become very good at math in a shockingly short period of time. I wanted to dive into all of this with Robert, who actually spoke to some of the most accomplished mathematicians working today to figure out what’s hype and what’s real — and to get a sense of just how exciting, and how scary, all of this is. Read the full interview transcript on…

2. 

   17 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 11 min

   It's about ethics in journalism, with Ben Smith

   Today I’m talking to Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of Semafor. Ben ran BuzzFeed News at the height of the Facebook traffic boom, and even wrote a book about it, called Traffic, which he discussed with me on Decoder back in 2023. Semafor, which is only four years old, is now a fast-growing and profitable media company, which makes about half of its revenue from events. So I wanted to talk to Ben about how that all works, and what it feels like to navigate the ethical conflicts that seem to be everywhere in media right now. Read the full interview transcript on The Verge. Links: Jonah Peretti…

3. 

   13 Aug 2026 · 39 min

   Does Google even want to win in AI?

   My guest today is The Verge’s Hayden Field, and we’re discussing a question that’s been rocketing around the tech industry for the past week: Is Google losing the AI race? That's because last week, the company announced a bombshell reorganization of its AI division. You can read these moves, and Google’s reaction, in a lot of different ways. So I really wanted to sit down with Hayden to dig into some of the smartest analysis we’ve seen this past week, and what we think is really going on here. Read the full interview transcript on The Verge. Links: The messy politics behind Google’s big AI…

4. 

   10 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 7 min

   Bose CEO Lila Snyder on the fight for high-quality audio

   My guest today is Lila Snyder, the CEO of Bose. Lila was last on the show about four years ago, and since then she’s dramatically rearchitected the company — she sold off Bose Professional, acquired the high end audio brands McIntosh Labs and Sonus faber, and, perhaps most importantly, started licensing all that core Bose technology to other companies. That big change in the business comes with a big change in structure. Becoming a software company in addition to a product company comes with a whole new set of challenges, and Lila and I got into how it’s all working. Read the full interview…

5. 

   6 Aug 2026 · 38 min

   The left and right agree on one thing: no data centers

   Our guest today is Gaby Del Valle, a policy reporter here at The Verge, and we’re discussing the growing backlash against AI data centers. Gaby recently reported a fantastic piece about Hernando County, Florida, where last month the county commission unanimously approved a year-long moratorium on data center construction. So I wanted Gaby to talk me through what these protests look like on the ground, from voters whose party affiliations have typically aligned them with big business. Read the full interview transcript on The Verge. Links: Right-wingers protesting data centers have a lot in…

6. 

   30 Jul 2026 · 43 min

   The end of the human internet

   Hey everyone, this is Nick Statt, senior producer on Decoder. We’re taking a brief publishing break while Nilay is out on vacation. We’ll resume regular programming next week, and we’ve got some great episodes in the works. In the meantime, we wanted to share an episode from the excellent podcast The Gray Area, with host Sean Illing. In this one, Sean sat down with The Atlantic journalist Charlie Warzel to talk specifically about the state of the internet in 2026 — and what it means that it feels increasingly overrun by non-human actors. Links: The Gray Area with Sean Illing | Apple Podcasts…

7. 

   27 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 12 min

   Tariffs didn’t bring manufacturing jobs back to the US

   Evan Smith, cofounder and CEO of Altana, was last on the show in early 2025 to talk about how Trump’s first few waves of tariffs were starting to affect global trade. It was a very alarming and also very illuminating chat; Evan and I got into the existential weeds of international relations and economics almost immediately. A year and a half later, and everything is somehow even more chaotic than it was the last time Evan and I talked — and that’s true about both trade and also the world of running a software company. Agentic AI, whack-a-mole tariff policy, war in Iran — we jumped right back…

8. 

   23 Jul 2026 · 44 min

   What Apple’s OpenAI lawsuit is really about

   Today, I’m talking with Hayden Field, The Verge’s senior AI reporter, about the major trade secrets lawsuit between Apple and OpenAI, and what this tells us about OpenAI’s future. Hayden has been covering OpenAI for years now, and she also just talked to a bunch of lawyers who specialize in intellectual property and trade secret law to get a sense of how serious this case is. The answer is not entirely positive for OpenAI. This legal battle could also affect OpenAI’s hardware plans, its forthcoming IPO, and its already-damaged reputation. Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.…

9. 

   20 Jul 2026 · 1 hr

   Dr. Jill Lepore on why the AI backlash is vital for the future

   Dr. Jill Lepore is one of the best writers there is at identifying institutional patterns in history, and Decoder is a show about systems and organization — so her new book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, is a perfect fit for the show. You build systems by measuring things — gathering information, quantifying it as data, and taking action on it. The book's big thesis is that this kind of systemic measurement is really a dehumanizing act, one that flattens humanity and human concerns into something, well, artificial. These artificial structures touch everything — not just in the…

10. 

    16 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 24 min

    Proton’s CTO: No company is going to jail for you

    We’ve got the first of a two-part series on the systems that run the world: I’m talking today with Bart Butler, the CTO of Proton, the company that makes private and secure productivity software. There’s a lot of big Decoder themes in this one. That includes how Proton has structured its ownership and architected its products to align its incentives with protecting users. At the same time, Proton faces new challenges and pressures, both at home in Switzerland and from the EU and US government that are putting its values to the test. Read the full interview transcript on The Verge. Links:…