Decoder with Nilay Patel

Latest Episodes:

Marques Brownlee on how to scale MKBHD while being the face of the YouTube brand Jan 22, 2021

Show notes

Nilay Patel talks with Marques Brownlee (MKBHD on YouTube) about building a business as a YouTuber, how content creators make money, and how to scale when you are the brand.

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Instagram’s Adam Mosseri on the future of Reels, moderation, and the responsibility of social media platforms Jan 19, 2021

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The Verge's Nilay Patel talks with head of Instagram Adam Mosseri about how to run a creative platform like Instagram at scale while keeping users — and democracy — safe, how much responsibility the platforms have for what their algorithms promote, and, of course, Instagram's products like Reels, Stories, and IGTV.

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Trump, Twitter, and the First Amendment, with platform moderation expert Daphne Keller Jan 12, 2021

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In the aftermath of the pro-Trump attack on the Capitol, many online platforms, including both Twitter and Facebook, banned President Trump. In this week’s episode, Nilay Patel talks with regulation expert and law professor Daphne Keller, about a big problem: how to moderate what happens on the internet.

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The business of meatless meat with Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown Dec 22, 2020

Show notes

Today’s episode is with Beyond Meat founder and CEO Ethan Brown. Nilay and Ethan discuss how the company is doing since its IPO in 2019 and how they are fairing during the pandemic. The food supply chain has seen significant impact during COVID and there has been an increased demand for plant-based proteins during the pandemic, with meat shortages and more people cooking at home. They also talk about how Beyond Meat is structured, how they are different from other competitors in the market, and what’s next from the company.

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How the @!#$ does advertising work, with Cadillac CMO Melissa Grady Dec 15, 2020

Show notes

Advertising is a huge part of the economy and something we all experience everyday through various mediums. In this episode, Nilay Patel talks with Cadillac CMO Melissa Grady about how advertising has been reinvented by technology — from data-driven insights to new social media platforms to the role of influencers in marketing. They also unpack how modern advertising works and where it's headed in the future.

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Can Substack CEO Chris Best build a new model for journalism? Dec 08, 2020

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Nilay Patel talks to Chris Best, cofounder and CEO of Substack, the subscription newsletter startup that’s taken the media industry by storm over the past few months.

The conversation explores how Substack's business model could potentially impact the media industry, but also dives into the basic questions about running a media company -- how Substack makes money, how it’s going to scale while offering additional services to writers, like legal protection, and, of course, content moderation.

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Alamo Drafthouse CEO Shelli Taylor on going back to the movies Dec 01, 2020

Show notes

On this episode of Decoder, Nilay talks with Shelli Taylor, the CEO of Alamo Drafthouse. Shelli stepped into her new role as CEO during the pandemic.

In this conversation, Nilay and Shelli discuss the steps she had to take to get her company back on solid ground — including justifying high fixed costs of expensive lightbulbs — and how the government has failed to manage the pandemic effectively for business owners. They also talk about what it will take to safely reopen theaters and what the future looks like, especially in the streaming age.

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Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games Nov 24, 2020

Show notes

On this week’s episode of Decoder Nilay Patel talks to Phil Spencer, the guy in charge of Xbox at Microsoft. They discuss not only the next-generation Xbox and PS5 just arriving in stores now, but how gaming itself has become part of mainstream culture, a trend that has definitely accelerated during the pandemic. We’ve also reached an inflection point for game streaming: Google, Amazon, and Microsoft all have services that allow consumers to play games on any device by streaming them over the internet, kind of like Netflix for games. Is that the future?

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Remote learning is here to stay — can we make it better? Nov 17, 2020

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On this week’s episode of Decoder, Nilay Patel talks with Sal Khan, the co-founder and CEO of Khan Academy, a nonprofit online learning platform for students in kindergarten through high school. Khan Academy is an organization that exists because of technology. What started with Sal tutoring his niece in math over video using off the shelf cameras and software, has grown into an organization with nearly 20 million users per month, available in 46 languages and used in more than 190 countries. And online learning has gotten even more vital with the pandemic.

In this conversation, Nilay and Sal discuss the future of learning, what online education is good at and where it struggles, how Khan Academy is growing, and how Sal’s thinking about handling trickier subjects like history and social studies.

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Mark Cuban on the presidency and the future of American business Nov 10, 2020

Show notes

On the first episode of Decoder, Nilay Patel interviews Mark Cuban. Mark is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, he’s a tech investor, and is on the hit show, Shark Tank. The conversation, recorded as last week’s election results rolled in, covers how interwoven business, technology, and policy are, whether its 5G, or the NBA bubble, or AI, or his investments into healthcare -- if you want to understand the landscape of the future, you have to understand tech, you have to understand business, and you have to understand policy.

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