Decoder with Nilay Patel

Recode's Kara Swisher and her executive producer Erica Anderson talk with a panel of entrepreneurs in Valparaiso, Indiana: Sarah Hallberg, the Medical Director of Virta Health; Eric Christopher, the co-founder and CEO of Zylo; and Robin Fleming, the CEO of Anvl. They discuss the positives and negatives of being tech entrepreneurs in an area not typically associated with the digital revolution, inc...

Venture capitalist Jana Messerschmidt, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about how she became a partner at Lightspeed and the co-founder of an all-female group of angel investors called #ANGELS. Messerschmidt previously worked at DivX, Netflix, and Twitter, and also discusses the early days of video streaming online and how Netflix timed the market perfectly. Plus: Why #ANGELS doesn't invest only i...

Susan Rice, the former US ambassador to the United Nations and National Security Advisor under President Obama, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about the "ass backwards" way President Trump has approached foreign policy and her new book, Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For. Rice explains the problem with isolationism and selfishness as policies, and says the current administrati...

Robert Jackson, one of the five commissioners on the Securities and Exchange Commission, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about how the SEC works and the problem with perpetual dual-class stock at companies like WeWork, Facebook, and Google. Jackson also explains why he opposes two proposed rule changes that would make it harder for activists to challenge a CEO's power, why the NYSE and Nasdaq are...

Reddit co-founder and Initialized Capital managing partner Alexis Ohanian talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about how he became a "dadvocate" for paid paternity leave. Ohanian explains how the medical complications faced by his wife, tennis star Serena Williams, woke him up to the problem, and how time off for fathers can help mothers, as well as female coworkers. He also discusses the problem with...

Writer and health advocate Ted Baxter talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his book, Relentless: How a Massive Stroke Changed My Life for the Better. Baxter, a former managing director at the hedge fund Citadel, had the stroke when he was only 41, and recounts how doctors initially misdiagnosed his symptoms; he also discusses the recovery process, which accelerated after he accepted that he coul...

Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about the recent mass shooting at an Airbnb in Orinda, Calif., how the company is changing its policies to keep guests safer, and what Chesky wishes he had done differently when Airbnb was smaller. They also discuss Airbnb's first brush with notoriety in 2011 and how Chesky "bungled" his response at the time, the importance of...

MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about her new podcast Modern Ruhles, the Trump voters who get overlooked by the media, and why Wall Streeters afraid of Elizabeth Warren should "look in the goddamn mirror." Ruhle also discusses her unusual path to working in the media, by way of Credit Suisse; the importance of the question "Are you better off in 2020 than you were in...

In this special episode of Recode Decode, Kara Swisher checks in with some of the organizers of the Google walkout, who came on her show in November 2018 after leading a 20,000-worker protest. Later in the show, Kara's executive producer Erica Anderson (herself one of the organizers who has since left Google) talks with some of the people who were inspired by the 2018 walkouts to continue fighting...

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about why he leaked highly classified information in 2013, why that doesn't make him a "traitor," and his new book, Permanent Record. Snowden also talks about how his youthful love of the US government and the early internet turned into skepticism; how his life has changed since going to Moscow; and why he believes Facebook is as un...

Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about the state of venture capital, diversity in tech, and his new book, What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture. Horowitz also discusses the impact of SoftBank's $100 billion Vision Fund on Silicon Valley, why he wouldn't invest in a social or mobile startup today, and what former CEO Travis Kalan...

Conservative analyst Bill Kristol talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about the impeachment effort against President Trump, how politics has entered a "crisis of truth" in the era of Fox News and social media, and the steps that should be taken pre-emptively to ensure that the 2020 elections are free and fair. Kristol also predicts that Trump could be "impeached by Thanksgiving," and explains why he...

Gary Cohn, the former Director of the National Economic Council and former chief economic adviser to President Trump, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about what he's done since leaving the Trump administration, including a "significant" investment and advisory position he's taken up in a mobile security company called Hoyos Integrity. Cohn explains how Hoyos is developing a more secure phone for...

Recode's Kara Swisher talks to the creators of two new plays that intersect with tech issues: Heidi Schreck, the former star and playwright of What the Constitution Means to Me, and the writer and director of Right to Be Forgotten — Sharyn Rothstein and Seema Sueko. Schreck took the name of her play from a series of debate competitions she competed in as a teenager, but has developed a more compli...

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about his new book, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators, which details the extreme lengths men like Harvey Weinstein have gone to escape accountability for sexual abuse. He discusses why other journalists before him couldn’t nail the Weinstein story, and how the powerful Hollywood produce...

Filmmaker Ken Burns talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his latest documentary series "Country Music," in which he explores the history of the genre, its place in the larger American musical landscape, and the powerful universality of "three chords and the truth." Burns says that unlike rock and jazz, country music is largely a story about powerful women, and also unpacks the ways in which it r...

Cambridge Analytica’s former business development director Brittany Kaiser talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about her new book TARGETED: The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower's Inside Story of How Big Data, Trump, and Facebook Broke Democracy and How It Can Happen Again. Kaiser talks about how she first observed the dangers of social media while working on Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, why she mis...

Matt Hulett, the president of education company Rosetta Stone, talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about the company’s pivot away from language-learning CDs and into a more advanced and “approachable” mobile app. He also talks about his “promiscuous” background in the tech industry; Rosetta Stone’s literacy catch-up program for children, Lexia Learning; and the bigger picture of how language educatio...

Recode's Kara Swisher interviews two CEOs in this double-feature episode of Recode Decode: First, she speaks with OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu about how technology is encroaching on the real estate industry, why housing is ripe for disruption, and how OpenDoor is bracing for the next recession. Later in the show, Swisher talks to Evite CEO Victor Cho about how the 21-year-old company is exploring new reve...

Andrew Marantz, a staff writer at the New Yorker, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his new book, Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno‑Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation. He discusses the danger of designing social media platforms around emotional engagement, how people like Mike Cernovich and Milo Yiannopoulos exploited people's belief in a broad political "consensus,"...

Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of HP who ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2016, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about campaigning against Donald Trump, her friendship with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, and the over-concentration of power among a handful of CEOs in the tech industry. Fiorina also talks about her experience as one of the few female tech CEOs of the 1990s, the “lasti...

Federal Election Commission Chair Ellen Weintraub talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about how the FEC works, how it tries to defend elections from foreign influence, and why the Commission is currently immobilized by a lack of "quorum" — in other words, it doesn't have enough members to launch or conclude any investigations. Weintraub talks about pending legislation to make advertising and campaign...

Barack Obama's former cybersecurity coordinator Michael Daniel, now the CEO of the nonprofit Cyber Threat Alliance, talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about the state of US cybersecurity heading into the 2020 elections. Daniel says the proposed solutions to election hacking may just cause new problems: "If you can track your vote," he says, "I can track your vote." Featuring: Michael Daniel (@CyAlli...

Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, one of the FTC's two Democratic commissioners, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about the state of antitrust problems in the tech industry, the history of pushback against the FTC for alleged over-enforcement, and whether it is under-enforcing the law today. Slaughter also talks about her objections to the $5 billion fine against Facebook that the FTC negotiated this year,...

Mark Warner, the senior US Senator from Virginia, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about several interconnected policy issues affecting the 2020 elections, including the security of voter registries, the expectation of social media manipulation by Russia and other hostile foreign powers, and the newly announced impeachment inquiry into President Trump's phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymy...