Google’s in the middle of its antitrust case in just as many months, after it lost a landmark trial in August over anticompetitive search practices. This time around, the DOJ is claiming Google has another illegal monopoly in the online advertising market. Verge senior policy reporter Lauren Feiner has been on the ground at the courthouse to hear t…

Ben Folds Five - "Underground" - Ben Folds Five The Afghan Whigs - "Fountain and Fairfax" - Gentlemen Buffalo Tom - "For All To See" - NO ALTERNATIVE Freedy Johnston - "Bad Reputation" - This Perfect World Morphine - "French Fries w/ Pepper" - Like Swimming Mark Lanegan - "El Sol" - Whiskey For The Holy Ghost Tori Amos - "Crucify" - Little Earthqua…

Today, I’m talking with Roy Jakobs. He’s the CEO of Royal Philips, which makes medical devices ranging from MRI machines to ventilators. Philips has a long history —- the company began in the late 19th century as a lightbulb manufacturer, and over the past century it’s grown and shrunk in various ways. Basically, while every other company has been …

We’ve been covering the rise of AI image editing very closely here on Decoder and at The Verge for several years now — the ability to create photorealistic images with nothing more than a chatbot prompt could completely reset our cultural relationship to photography. But one argument keeps cropping up in response. You’ve heard it a million times, a…

Tramhaus - "Beech" - The First Exit Charly Bliss - "Back There Now" - Forever PALE WAVES - "Gravity" - Smitten Blush Always - "Just Keep Swimming" - An Ode To ? Wishy - "Love On The Outside" - Triple Seven Chime School - "The End" - The Boy Who Ran The Paisley Hotel Hothouse Flowers - "Thing of Beauty" - Songs from the Rain Valley - "When You Know …

Today, I’m talking with Mike Krieger, the new chief product officer at Anthropic, one of the hottest AI companies in the industry. Anthropic’s main product right now is Claude, the name of both its industry-leading AI model and a chatbot that competes with ChatGPT. Mike has a fascinating resume: he was the cofounder of Instagram, and then started A…

The web has a problem: huge chunks of it keep going offline. The web isn’t static, parts of it sometimes just… vanish. But it’s not all grim. The Internet Archive has a massive mission to identify and back up our online world into a vast digital library. In 2001, it launched the Wayback Machine, an interface that lets anyone call up snapshots of si…

Ray Lynch - "Celestial Soda Pop" - Deep Breakfast John Prine - "Spanish Pipedream" - John Prine Echo and the Bunnymen - "Seven Seas" - Ocean Rain Billy Bragg - "A New England" - Life's a Riot with Spy vs. Spy The Smiths - "I Won't Share You" - Strangeways, Here We Come PIXIES - "Hey" - Doolittle Dave Matthews Band - "Best of What's Around" (Live at…

Decoder is off this week for a short end-of-summer break. We’ll be back with both our interview and explainer episodes after the Labor Day holiday. In the meantime we thought we’d re-share an explainer that’s taken on a whole new relevance in the last couple weeks, about deepfakes and misinformation. In February, I talked with Verge policy editor A…

DJ Shadow - "Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt" - Endtroducing... Siouxsie and the Banshees - "Tattoo" - Dear Prudence B side/Downside Up The Wild Bunch - "The Look Of Love" - Tearing' Down The Avenue Kirsty MacColl - "Angel" - Titanic Days Massive Attack - "Any Love" - Single Funky Porcini - "Long Road" - Hed Phone Sex Massive Attack - "Safe Fro…

Joe Jackson - "On Your Radio" - I'm the Man FEAR - "Beef Bologna" - The Record Germs - "Media Blitz" - GI The Circle Jerks - "Beverly Hills" - Group Sex Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Out in LA" - Red Hot Chili Peppers Beach Bunny - "Vertigo" - Single The Alarm - "Sixty Eight Guns" - Declaration Fontaines D.C. - "Here's The Thing" - Romance Fake Fruit - …

Decoder is off this week for a short end-of-summer break. We’ll be back with both our interview and explainer episodes after the Labor Day holiday, and 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 from the Land of the Giants podcast, which is over at Vulture this season, fo…

The Onion is a comedy institution — and like everything else in media, it went on a pure nightmare hell ride in the 2010s. We could do an entire episode on the G/O Media calamity, but the short version is: A bunch of friends just managed to buy The Onion, and they're busy relaunching the website, going back to print, and, clearly, having a blast do…

Today I’m talking with Thomas Dohmke, the CEO of GitHub. GitHub is the platform for managing code – but since 2018, it’s also been owned by Microsoft. We talk a lot about how independent GitHub really is inside of Microsoft — especially now that Microsoft is all-in on AI, and Gitbhub Copilot is one of the biggest AI product success stories that exi…

There’s a major internet speech regulation currently making its way through Congress, and it has a really good chance of becoming law. It’s called KOSPA: the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act, which passed in the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support late last month. At a high level, KOSPA could radically change how tech platforms handle spe…

Oceanator - "Drift Away" - Everything Is Love And Death The Linda Lindas - "All In My Head" - No Obligation The Beaches - "Takes One To Know One" - Single Oso Oso - "that's what time does" - Life Till Bones Hubbell Benson Music - "Except For Him" - Phantom Frequencies Enumclaw Band - "Change" - Home In Another Life Armlock - "Fear" - Seashell Angel…

Today, I’m talking with Replika founder and CEO Eugenia Kuyda, and I will just tell you right away, we get all the way to people marrying their AI companions, so get ready. It’s a ride. Replika’s basic pitch is pretty simple: what if you had an AI friend? The company offers avatars you can curate to your liking that pretend to be human, so they can…

Today, I’m talking to Jonathan Kanter, the assistant attorney general for antitrust at the United States Department of Justice. This is Jonathan’s second time on the show, and it’s a bit of an emergency podcast situation. On Monday, a federal court issued a monumental decision in the DOJ’s case against Google, holding that Google Search and the tex…

Today, I’m talking with Glenn Fogel, the CEO of Booking Holdings, which owns a large portfolio of familiar travel brands: OpenTable, Kayak, and Priceline, as well as its largest subsidiary, Booking.com. This episode is pure Decoder bait all the way through — from Booking’s structure, to competition with hotels and airlines increasingly going direct…

Wild Powwers - "Looper" - Pop Hits & Total Bummers, Vol. 5 Wishy - "Sick Sweet" - Triple Seven Blush Always - "Fond of Her" - An Ode To ? MILLY - "Nothing To Learn From" - Your Own Becoming Spring Silver - "The Utility Models" - Don't You Think It's Strange The Jesus Lizard - "Alexis Feels Sick" - Hide And Seek Dinosaur Jr. - "Whenever Your Ready" …

Crows - "Bored" - Reason Enough Babe Report - "Universal" - Did You Get Better Bad Moves - "Hallelujah" - Wearing Out The Refrain The Silver Lines - "Hotel Room" - Hotel Room Diary - "Brush Pile" - Speedboat EP The Mysterines - "Goodbye Sunshine" - Afraid of Tomorrows Bleach Lab - "Everything At Once" - Lost In A Rush Of Emptiness Wishy - "Triple S…

Every time we talk about AI, we get one big piece of feedback that I really want to dive into: how the lightning-fast explosion of AI tools affects the climate. AI takes a lot of energy, and there’s a huge unanswered question as to whether using all that juice for AI is actually worth it, both practically and morally. It’s messy and complicated and…

Today, I’m talking with Hanneke Faber, the CEO of Logitech. Hanneke’s still pretty fresh to the role: She joined the company last October, after former CEO Bracken Darrell left following the pandemic boom and subsequent economic slowdown that halted Logitech’s growth. Hanneke, who comes from Unilever and Procter & Gamble, is new to the world of con…

The Supreme Court has just taken on the entire idea of the US administrative state — and the Court is winning. Earlier this month, a conservative majority overturned a longstanding legal principle called Chevron deference. The implications are enormous for every possible kind of regulation — and net neutrality looks poised to be the first victim. V…

Today, I’m talking with Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe. RJ was on the show last September when we chatted at the Code Conference, but the past 10 months have seen a whirlwind of change throughout the car industry and at Rivian in particular. This year alone, the company unveiled five new models in its lineup and also just announced a $5 billion…

GIFT - "Later" - Illuminator Beeef - "Nice Clean" Shirt" - Single Monobloc - "I'm Just Trying To Love you" - Single Bug Seance - "These Days" - I'm right here Been Stellar - "All In One" - Scream from New York, NY Maxim Ludwig. Angel Olsen - "I Can't Stand It" - The Power of the Heart: A Tribute to Lou Reed Good Looks - "Broken Body" - Lived Here F…

This week I’m talking to Matthew Ball, who was last on the show in 2022 to talk about his book “The Metaverse: How it Will Revolutionize Everything.” It’s 2024 and it’s safe to say that has not happened yet. But Matt’s still on the case — in fact he just released an almost complete update of the book, now with the much more sober title, “Building t…

Today, I’m talking with Arati Prabhakar, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. That’s a cabinet-level position, where she works as the chief science and tech advisor to President Biden. Arati and her team of about 140 people at the OSTP are responsible for advising the president on not only big developments in sci…

Stereolab- "John Cage Bubblegum" - Little Pieces of Stereolab (A SwitchedOn Sampler) FEET - "Better Than Last" - Make It Up The Bug Club- "Lonsdale Slipons" - On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System Worldwide The Silver Lines- "Tame" - Single Teleforme- "Little Victories (Live)" - Concrete Living (Live at St. Marks Church) Bug Seance- "I can …

Today I’m talking to Nicholas Thompson, the CEO of The Atlantic. I was really excited to talk to Nick. Like so many media CEOs, including Vox Media’s, he just signed a deal allowing OpenAI to use The Atlantic’s vast archives as training data, but he also has a rich background in tech. Before he was the CEO of The Atlantic, Nick was the editor-in-ch…

X the Band - "4th of July" - See How We Are GIFT - "Wish Me Away" - Illuminator Finom - "Hungry" - Not God Hot Joy - "Fingers on my Side" - Single Galaxie 500 - "Fourth of July" - This Is Our Music Bibi Club - "Parc de Beauvoir" - Feu de garde Zero Point Energy - "I'm Receiving Downloads" - Tilted Planet Good Looks - "Broken Body" - Lived Here For …

Canva got its start more than a decade ago as a different form of disruptive tech for creatives. It’s a web-based platform that makes design tools cheaper and accessible for individuals, schools, and businesses from tiny to enterprise. Melanie has big goals to grow the company — and try to do good in the process. Links: Canva tackled digital design…

Fontaines D.C. - "Favourite" - Romance Cardinals - "Twist and Turn" - Cardinals EP Brat - "Control" - Mind Control Tramhaus - "Once Again" - First Exit Bleu Grave - "Television Tell Me What To Do" - Bleu Grave, Vol. 2 EP Dent May, Pearl & The Oysters - "Time Flies When You're Having Fun" - What's For Breakfast? The Lemon Twigs - "A Dream Is All I K…

Girl Scout - "I Just Needed You To Know" - Single GIFT - "Going In Circles" - Illuminator PONY - "Freezer" - Single MILLY - Spilling Ink" - Your Own Becoming Cola.Band - "Pallor Tricks" - The Gloss Chartreuse - "Never To Be Real" - Morning Ritual Been Stellar - "Pumpkin" - Screams from New York, NY Good Looks - "If It's Gone" - Lived Here For Awhil…

It’s almost the Fourth of July, and that means it’s time for our annual grilling episode. This year, I’m talking with Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov, who has big plans for using very modern fan-based marketing techniques to expand the market for the company’s old-fashioned, fire-burning, aspirational product. Links: Big Green Egg Appoints a New CE…

Today, we’re talking about politics and lobbying in America. It’s hard to imagine a time when the influence of big corporations and billionaires didn’t touch every part of American politics, but the kind of lobbying we have now didn’t really exist before the 1970s. Now, our political debates about everything from energy, finance, and healthcare are…

Today, I’m talking with Greg Peters, the co-CEO of Netflix. I caught up with Greg while he was at the Cannes Lions festival in France, which is basically the world’s biggest gathering of advertisers and marketers. It’s an increasingly important place for Greg to be, as Netflix’s new ad tier has nearly doubled in six months to more than 40 million s…

We’ve got a special episode of the show today – I was traveling last week, so Verge deputy editor Alex Heath and our new senior AI reporter Kylie Robison are filling in for me, with a very different kind of episode about AI. We talk a lot about AI in a broad sense on Decoder — it comes up in basically every single interview I do these days. But we …

Girlfriends and Boyfriends - "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" - Lost in the Noise The Dream Academy - "The Edge of Forever" - The Dream Academy Drab Majesty - "Photograph" - I Saw The TV Glow Soundtrack Washed Out - "The Hardest Part" - Notes from a Quiet Life Winnetka Bowling League - "Handsome" - Sha La La Dayglow - "Every Little Thing I Say I Do" - …

Tubi is a free and very rapidly growing streaming TV platform — according to Nielsen, it had an average of a million viewers watching every minute in May 2024, beating out Disney Plus, Max, Peacock, and basically everything else, save Netflix and YouTube. All those streaming service price hikes are driving people to free options, and Tubi is right …

Oceanator - "Get Out" - Everything Is Love & Death (Out 8/30) The Bug Club - "Quality Pints" - Single Martial Arts - "Defector" - Single Girl and Girl - "Mother" - Call A Doctor Holiday Ghosts - "Sublime Disconnect" - Coat of Arms Been Stellar - "Passing Judgment" - Scream from New York, NY PURE HEX - "She Comes Up" - Spilling (Part 1) Hipsy Gap - …

Private equity is a simple concept — a PE firm uses some combination of money and debt to buy a company, then makes a profit — but the reality of what happens to the companies that get acquired is anything but. It's everywhere, and it's not going away. In this summer remix, we're talking with Brendan Ballou, author of Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan…

Cohere is one of the buzziest AI startups around right now. It's not making consumer products; it's focused on the enterprise market and making AI products for big companies. And there's a huge tension there: up until recently, computers have been deterministic. If you give computers a certain input, you usually know exactly what output you’re goin…

The art of video game design is flourishing, but it feels like a really grim time to be in the business of making and distributing games. Huge global publishers and tiny indie studios alike are facing huge financial pressures, and it doesn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon. So where did this enormous pressure come from, if consumer interest is h…

Today, I’m talking with Zoom CEO Eric Yuan — and let me tell you, this conversation is nothing like what I expected. It turns out Eric wants Zoom to be much, much more than just a videoconferencing platform. Zoom wants to take on Microsoft and Google and now has a big investment in AI – and Eric’s visions for what that AI will do are pretty wild. S…

Spring Silver - "Another Perfect Day, Another Perfect Night" - Single Good Looks - "Self-destructor" - Can You See Me Tonight? Been Stellar - "Sweet" - Pumpkin EP METZ - "Superior Mirage" - Up On Gravity Hill Hot Water Music, City and Colour - "After The Impossible" - VOWS Blush Always, BROCKHOFF - "Bigger Picture" - Single Softcult - "One Of The P…

For nearly 20 years now, the web has been Google’s platform; we’ve all just lived on it. I think of Decoder as a show for people trying to build things, and a lot of people have built their things 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 build…

Sunny Day Real Estate - "Grendel" - Diary at London Bridge Studio Spiritual Cramp, White Reaper - "Whatever You Say Man" - Single Acid Tongue - "Consumerism" - Acid on the Dancefloor Owners Club - "Come Dine With Me" - Single METZ - "Entwined (Streetlight Buzz)" - Up On Gravity Hill Cuffed Up - "Small Fry" - All You Got Rosie Tucker - "Unending Bli…

Fontaines D.C. - "Starburster" - Romance Sprints - "Help Me, I'm Spiraling" - Black Box Sessions bob junior, Jennessa Cairo - "Float Away" - Single gglum - "SPLAT!" - The Garden Dream Drahla - "Default Parody" - angel tape Maxband - "Lines" - On Ice Holiday Ghosts - "Big Congratulations" - Coat of Arms Van Houten - "Coming of Age" - The Tallest Roo…

Today, I’m talking with Joseph Cox, one of the best cybersecurity reporters around and a co-founder of the new media site 404 Media. Joseph has a new book coming out in June called Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever, and I can’t recommend it enough. It’s basically a caper, but with the FBI running a phone netwo…