Decoder with Nilay Patel

Sarah Personette is the CEO of Puck, a media company that's been around for about five years. Puck hires big star reporters who write newsletters as part of a subscription bundle. Those newsletters are often must-reads in their industries, and those reporters get equity in Puck and a share of the company's revenue.

It's a place where the financial incentives of the influencer economy crash right into the rigors of traditional journalism — and as regular Decoder listeners know, I have a lot of questions about how those two things work (or don't) in the modern media landscape. 

Read the full interview transcript on The Verge.

Links: 

Puck buys Air Mail in deal valued at $16M | The Wrap

The man yelling ‘iceberg’ on the Hollywood Titanic | New York Times

Sarah Personette joins news startup Puck as CEO | Variety

Are we past peak newsletter? | New York Times

Two new newsletters bet they’ve got Hollywood covered | LA Times

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Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, let’s talk about the looming AI monetization cliff, and whether some of the biggest companies in space can become real, profitable businesses before they careen right off it.

My guest today is Hayden Field, who’s our senior AI reporter here at The Verge. She’s been keeping close tabs on both Anthropic and OpenAI, and how these two companies, both slate to go public this year, tell us a whole lot about the AI industry in 2026.

Links: 

The vibes are off at OpenAI | The Verge

Anthropic essentially bans OpenClaw from Claude | The Verge

Why OpenAI killed Sora | The Verge

OpenAI just bought TBPN | The Verge

National poll shows voters like AI less than ICE | The Verge

The spiraling cost of making AI | WSJ

OpenAI’s Fidji Simo taking leave amid exec shake-up | Wired

OpenAI raises another $122B at $850B valuation | The Verge

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Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My guest today is Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins. Cisco is one of those big companies that everyone has heard of but most of us don’t have to interact with very much; they’re not really a consumer brand. But without Cisco's actual routers and switches and silicon — and the software to make those things work —  there’s no internet, no cloud, and no AI.

But a data center is a really unpleasant neighbor to have, and there’s robust opposition to new data center builds all over the country. So I had to start by asking what feels, strangely, like one of the most urgent questions of the moment: Should we build data centers in space?

Links:

Nvidia launches space computing, rocketing AI Into orbit | Nvidia

Nvidia’s AI dominance expands to networking | CRN

Amid rising pushback, 2025 data center cancellations surge | Heatmap

Billionaires want data centers everywhere, including space | The Verge

How Ciena keeps the internet online | Decoder

Okta’s CEO is betting big on agent identity | Decoder

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, we’re talking about the landmark social media addiction trials that just resulted in two major verdicts against Big Tech — one in California against Meta and Google, and another in New Mexico against just Meta.

These are complicated cases with some huge repercussions for both how these platforms work and the very nature of speech in America. So we’ve brought on two heavy hitters: my friend Casey Newton, founder and editor of Platformer and co-host of Hard Fork, as well as Verge senior policy reporter Lauren Feiner, who’s been covering these trials since the beginning. 

Links: 

Meta & YouTube found negligent in social media addiction trial | The Verge

Meta misled users about its products’ safety, jury decides | The Verge

Meta’s legal defeat: a victory for kids, or a loss for everyone | The Verge

Can you have child safety and Section 230, too? | Platformer

The terrible cost of infinite scroll | The New York Times

I watched grieving parents stare down Zuckerberg in court | The Verge

Section 230 turns 30 as it faces its biggest tests yet | The Verge

Congress considers blowing up internet law | The Verge

Sen. Rob Wyden: “Why the internet still needs Section 230” | The Verge

How America turned against the First Amendment | The Verge

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My guest today is Okta CEO Todd McKinnon. Okta is a platform that big companies use to manage security and identity across all the many apps and platforms their employees use. Most of us run into it as login management at work.

SaaS companies like Okta are under a lot of pressure in the age of AI, which Todd even said on an earnings call he's "paranoid" about. But you'll also hear Todd say that for Okta specifically, there's also a world of opportunity as the very concept of a digital "identity" has to expand into things that aren't really people.

Links: 

CEO ‘paranoid’ as vibe coders stir SaaSpocalypse fears | The Register

$300B evaporated. The SaaSpocalypse has begun | Forbes

How AI assistants are moving the security goalposts | Krebs on Security

What everyone’s missing about AI and development | CRN

Agents run amok: Identity lessons from Moltbook’s experiment | Okta

Breakup of IBM is Antitrust goal (1972) | New York Times

Subscribe to The Verge to access the ad-free version of Decoder!

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices