Best Recode Events Podcasts (2025)

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The AI industry is at a major crossroads 44:02

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4d ago44:02

44:02

This is Hayden Field, senior AI reporter at The Verge and your Thursday episode guest host. It’s been a very big news week in AI, and a lot of it had to do with OpenAI, its DevDay in San Francisco this week, and the viral explosion of AI-generated video thanks to the company’s new Sora app. So I brought in Kanjun Qiu, CEO of AI startup Imbue and a …

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Why the Guardian Doesn't Need a Billionaire to Thrive 39:00

5d ago39:00

39:00

In lots of ways Guardian Media Group is facing the same problems as every other news publisher: A tricky ad environment, platform problems, looming AI threats. One big difference: The Guardian also has a $1.5 billion trust backing the non-profit, which seems way, way better than being owned by a run-of-the-mill billionaire who might want to meddle …

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Building the ‘Zillow of Franchising’ with Mariyam Shamshidova of Wefranch Women in Tech New York 58:20

3d ago58:20

58:20

By WeAreTech.fm

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Rivian CEO on CarPlay, Lidar, and affordable EVs 50:38

7d ago50:38

50:38

I’m Joanna Stern, the senior personal tech columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and this is my final Decoder episode filling in for Nilay while he’s out on parental leave. My guest today: Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe. This is RJ’s third time on the show, and it felt like the perfect follow-up to my conversation last week with Ford CEO Jim Farley. I love…

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The good, the bad, and the future of AI agents 46:35

8d ago46:35

46:35

This is Hayden Field, senior AI reporter at The Verge and your Thursday episode guest host. Today, I’m talking with David Hershey, who leads the applied AI team at Anthropic. I wanted to have David on because earlier this week, Anthropic released a brand-new AI model called Claude Sonnet 4.5 that’s been making waves. So I wanted to sit down with Da…

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Almost Everyone is Taking Money from OpenAI. Why is Ziff Davis suing them? 34:22

12d ago34:22

34:22

In the future, digital publishers could get run over by AI. In the present, they are deeply concerned about Google, and the prospect that the search giant is going to choke off their last reliable traffic stream. That may explain why lots of publishers are making deals with OpenAI now -- and doing a lot of grousing about Google. Ziff Davis CEO Vive…

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Ford CEO Jim Farley on China, tariffs, and the quest for a $30,000 EV 1:03:22

14d ago1:03:22

1:03:22

This is Joanna Stern, senior personal technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal. I’m the last Monday guest host filling in for Nilay here on Decoder while he’s out on parental leave with his adorable new son, and I’m very excited to be talking today to Ford CEO Jim Farley. I’m a longtime Decoder listener and my favorite episodes are car episo…

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How AI safety took a backseat to military money 42:56

18d ago42:56

42:56

This is Hayden Field, senior AI reporter at The Verge — and your Thursday episode guest host. I have another couple of shows for you while Nilay is out on parental leave, and we’re going to be spending more time diving into some of the unforeseen consequences of the generative AI boom. Today, I’m talking with Heidy Khlaaf, who is chief AI scientist…

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The Future of Late Night TV, Jimmy Kimmel, and The First Amendment 26:53

19d ago26:53

26:53

When’s the last time you stayed up to watch a late night TV monologue? Months? Years? Decades? I’m not sure, either. But I stayed up Tuesday night to watch Jimmy Kimmel’s return. James Poniewozik, who covers TV for the New York Times, just caught up with it the next day on YouTube. Which underscores one of the odder parts of the Trump v. Kimmel fig…

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Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird 1:06:00

21d ago1:06:00

1:06:00

Guest host Hank Green talks with his friend Dropout CEO Sam Reich about keeping a business simple, trying to run a company the “right way,” and why the internet should be full of as many weird little projects as possible. Read the full transcript on The Verge. Links: How CollegeHumor reinvented itself for the new internet age | People CollegeHumor …

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How chatbots — and their makers — are enabling AI psychosis 50:11

25d ago50:11

50:11

Verge senior AI reporter Hayden Field and New York Times reporter Kashmir Hill discuss the significant mental health impact AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, can have on users — both people in crisis, and also people who seemed stable. This episode contains non-detailed discussions of suicide and mental illness. If you or someone you know is in crisis,…

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I tried Zuckerberg's $800 Ray-Bans. Are they the future? With Alex Heath 45:00

26d ago45:00

45:00

A year ago I got try a pair of $10,000 computer goggles from Meta. The tech was super-impressive, but you couldn’t buy them them. You still can’t. Now Mark Zuckerberg is trying a similar idea. But this time around the the tech is scaled-down, lighter and way cheaper: the new version costs $800, and you’ll be able to buy them in a couple days. Why w…

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How TBPN Made a Tech News Splash 39:10

23d ago39:10

39:10

John Coogan knows what you’re thinking: the world does not need another tech podcast. And the world does not need another podcast featuring two dudes talking. Yet Coogan and Jordi Hays have started another tech podcast, featuring the two of them talking and… it’s a hit. In the span of a year, TBPN has become the place where tech execs go to chop up…

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How brands and creators are fighting for your attention — and your money 1:01:07

28d ago1:01:07

1:01:07

This is Hank Green, the cofounder of Complexly. I’m back for my second guest hosting spot here on Decoder while Nilay is out on parental leave. Today, I’m talking with Digitas CEO Amy Lanzi, who runs a major marketing and ad agency. You might remember Amy; Nilay interviewed her for Decoder live at an event in New York City almost a year ago. But Ni…

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Sierra CEO Bret Taylor on why the AI bubble feels like the dotcom boom 51:14

1M ago51:14

51:14

This is Alex Heath. For my final episode as your Thursday episode guest host, I recently sat down with Bret Taylor, the CEO of AI startup Sierra and the chairman of OpenAI, for a live event in San Francisco hosted by Alix Partners. Bret has worked at Google, Facebook, and Salesforce in high-level, executive roles, and he led Twitter’s board during …

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Patch’s AI Experiment: Thousands of Newsletters, Zero Humans 39:07

1M ago39:07

39:07

Everyone agrees that the decline/disapperance of local news is a big problem. No one agrees about the best way to solve it. So let’s check in on a new AI push from Patch, the people who have been trying to do local news, online, at scale, for more than two decades. Last spring, Patch CEO Warren St. John announced that he was running local newslette…

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Sal Khan is hopeful that AI won't destroy education 1:03:33

1M ago1:03:33

1:03:33

This is Hank Green, cofounder of Complexly. You might remember last year when I turned the tables on Nilay and interviewed him on his own show. That was a ton of fun, and it was so much fun that they’ve brought me back again. This time, I’m stepping in for Nilay to host the next few Decoder episodes while he’s out on parental leave. Today, I’m talk…

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The quest to keep OpenAI honest 40:12

1M ago40:12

40:12

Despite being one of the most valuable companies in the world, OpenAI is still technically a nonprofit. That’s what set the stage for the dramatic board coup in 2023 that briefly ousted Sam Altman as CEO. And now, OpenAI is trying to shake this nonprofit structure so it can raise even more money and, eventually, go public. There’s a lot at stake he…

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Oliver Darcy Thinks the Media Doesn’t Get It. So He Built Status 53:40

1M ago53:40

53:40

One thing about the internet is that it lets you build really, really fast. A little more than a year ago, Oliver Darcy was an unemployed former CNN media reporter. Today he’s the proprietor of Status, his must-read media newsletter. In our conversation, we spend a little bit of time talking through the mechanics of his two-man operation, and how h…

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Rewind: Bookshop CEO's crusade to save books from Amazon 1:07:13

2M ago1:07:13

1:07:13

Hello, and welcome to Decoder! This is Senior Producer Nick Statt. We’re on a small break for the end of summer, and, sadly, Nilay will still be out a little while longer when we come back. But we have an excellent slate of guest host episodes starting up next month, so stay tuned for those. In the meantime, we wanted to bring back one of our favor…

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Why Henry Blodget is Building Another Media Company 57:56

2M ago57:56

57:56

Henry Blodget can’t help himself. The Business Insider founder is starting another media business, knowing full well how difficult the industry can be. You can watch him build it in real time: Regenerator on Substack, and Solutions on TikTok, YouTube and everywhere you hear your favorite podcasts. Henry — who hired me to work at Business Insider in…

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Is ChatGPT killing higher education? 57:01

2M ago57:01

57:01

Hello! Decoder senior producer Kate Cox here. I’m afraid I’m still not Nilay, but I hope you’ve been enjoying our series of guest hosts this summer while he’s out on parental leave. We have a few more really great guest episodes coming up, before Nilay returns to the host chair later this fall, so stay tuned. The production team is taking our own b…

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Amazon is betting on agents to win the AI race 53:50

2M ago53:50

53:50

This is Alex Heath, your Thursday episode guest host and deputy editor at The Verge. One of the biggest topics in AI these days is agents — the idea that AI is going to move from chatbots to reliably completing tasks for us in the real world. But the problem with agents is that they really aren’t all that reliable right now. There’s a lot of work h…

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ESPN boss Jimmy Pitaro on streaming, the NFL and sports betting 48:14

2M ago48:14

48:14

The media industry has been waiting for ESPN to cut the cord for a decade. Now it’s finally happening: This week the sports TV giant will let you start streaming — without a cable TV subscription — for $30 a month. Why now? ESPN boss Jimmy Pitaro is quite frank about it: Along with his boss — Disney CEO Bob Iger — he wanted to make as much money fr…

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How the head of Obsidian went from superfan to CEO 54:22

2M ago54:22

54:22

Obsidian is a note-taking and productivity app that occupies the same "second brain" space as competitors like Notion — but in a lot of ways, it's also startlingly different. Obsidian's files are Markdown-based, stored locally on your own devices, and completely free to use. Steph Ango, the CEO, is also different in a lot of ways: He's not an Obsid…

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ChatGPT chief Nick Turley doesn't want you too attached to AI 55:14

2M ago55:14

55:14

This is Alex Heath, your Thursday episode guest host and deputy editor at The Verge. Today, I’m talking to a very special guest: Nick Turley, OpenAI’s head of ChatGPT. While Sam Altman is definitely the public face of OpenAI, Nick has been leading ChatGPT’s development since the very beginning, and it’s now the fastest-growing software product of a…

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A Busy - and Expensive - Summer for AI, with NYT's Mike Isaac 51:42

2M ago51:42

51:42

What makes a particular engineer worth $250 million to Mark Zuckerberg? What does Trump 2.0 mean — and not mean — to people building large language models? I didn’t know the answers to these questions either. So I got the New York Times’ Mike Isaac, who covers this stuff for a living, to walk me through some of the biggest questions in AI right now…

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Notion's CEO wants you to demand better from your tools 55:33

2M ago55:33

55:33

This is Casey Newton, founder and editor of Platformer and cohost of the Hard Fork podcast. This is the second episode of my productivity-focused Decoder series I’m doing while Nilay is out on parental leave. Today, I’m talking with Notion cofounder and CEO Ivan Zhao. I’ve followed Notion for quite some time now — I’m a big fan, and I use Notion as…

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GitHub's CEO says AI coding is ‘here to stay’ 1:01:14

2M ago1:01:14

1:01:14

This is Alex Heath, deputy editor at The Verge. My guest today is GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke. In many ways, GitHub Copilot set off the current AI coding boom. But since Thomas was on the show a year ago, the rise of vibe coding has shifted the buzz to newer platforms like Cursor and Windsurf. As you’ll hear in our conversation, Thomas is thinking a l…

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Why the Algorithm is Making Comedy Boom, Again 58:53

2M ago58:53

58:53

The last time I talked to Jesse David Fox about the comedy boom it was… March 5, 2020. Since then, some things have changed. But in other ways it’s just the same: comedy - or at least, some kinds of comedy - seems almost custom-built for our current technological and cultural moment, and it’s easier than ever to get this stuff on your devices whene…

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Why tech is racing to adopt AI coding 55:59

2M ago55:59

55:59

This is Casey Newton, founder and editor of the Platformer newsletter and cohost of the Hard Fork podcast. I’ll be guest hosting the next few episodes of Decoder while Nilay is out on parental leave. For the next three weeks, I’ll be talking to leaders in the productivity space about what they’re building, and how they can help us get things done. …