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Decoder with Nilay Patel

The Verge

#18 in Business this week

Decoder is a show from The Verge about big ideas — and other problems. Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel talks to a diverse cast of innovators and policymakers at the frontiers of business and technology to reveal how they’re navigating an ever-changing landscape, what keeps them up at night, and what it all means for our shared future.

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  • 979 episodes
  • a few times a week
  • Avg 56 min
  • English

Episodes 979

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  • May 2, 2023 · 1 hr 11 min

    The social media age for news is over. Former BuzzFeed News editor Ben Smith on what’s next

    Ben Smith is the former and founding editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed News, the founder and editor-in-chief of Semafor, and the author of a new book called Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral, which is about the rise and fall of the social platform age in media, through the lens of Gawker Media and Buzzfeed and, in particular, their founders, Nick Denton and Jonah Peretti. I say the fall of the social platform age pretty literally: just before we spoke, Buzzfeed actually shut down Buzzfeed News, saying it just wasn’t making enough money, Facebook and the rest are all in on vertical video, and the chaos at Twitter means a lot of baseline media industry assumptions are now up for grabs. Ben and I talked about a lot – where do journalists build their brands now? Where does traffic even come from anymore? What’s next? Of course, we talked about Semafor as well. Ben and his co-founder, Justin Smith, raised $25 million and launched a news website, newsletters, and events covering the US and sub-Saharan Africa, with plans to expand into other regions. I wanted to know what lessons from Buzzfeed Ben brought into Semafor and, honestly, how he’s thinking about building an audience instead of just trying to get traffic. This is a good one. The book’s great, too. Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23470662 Links: Traffic by Ben Smith What Colors Are This Dress? TikTok - The Verge Is Substack Notes a ‘Twitter clone’? We asked CEO Chris Best - The Verge MyPillow CEO’s free speech social network will ban posts that take the Lord’s name in vain - The Verge Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News Cambridge Analytica: understanding Facebook’s data privacy scandal - The Verge 28 Signs You Were Raised By Persian Parents In America Here's The Powerful Letter The Stanford Victim Read To Her Attacker More Than 180 Women Have Reported Sexual Assaults At Massage Envy Macedonia’s Pro-Trump Fake News Industry Had American Links, And Is Under Investigation For Possible Russia Ties Watching Silicon Valley Bank melt down from the front row, with Brex CEO Henrique Dubugras - Decoder, The Verge Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. It was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott with help from Hadley Robinson and it was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Director is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

  • Apr 18, 2023 · 1 hr 11 min

    Brightdrop isn’t just selling electric vans — it's redesigning delivery

    Travis Katz is the CEO of BrightDrop, a subsidiary of GM that makes electrified delivery vans with an eye toward rebooting all of how delivery works. BrightDrop has pretty big partnerships already, with names like FedEx, Verizon, and Walmart committed to its Zevo 600 van, and it’s got big ideas for making the steps from the van to your door more efficient as well with something called e-carts. Katz says there’s a huge demand for delivery especially as online shopping keeps getting bigger, but the transportation network is at capacity, and you can’t just keep throwing more trucks and drivers on the road, or making city streets wider. His plan is to redesign the entire system to make it more efficient. So I wanted to know how he’s attacking that problem and making it manageable, all while getting buy-in from customers that won’t really accept delays or increased costs. BrightDrop is a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors, so I also wanted to know how that works, what he gets from being part of the big company, and which parts slow him down. Lots of classic Decoder stuff in this one. Links: GM’s electric delivery van just set a world record — with me riding shotgun - The Verge Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23451134 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. It was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott with help from Hadley Robinson and it was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Director is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Showing 301–320 of 979 episodes