Decoder with Nilay Patel

Technology journalist and former New York Times reporter John Markoff talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his nearly three-decade long career covering tech for the Times before retiring at the end of 2016. He reflects on why Steve Jobs was both a great and terrible person to interview and how science fiction books such as "Neuromancer," "Snow Crash" and "True Names" gave him a leg up on other r...

Time Well Spent founder Tristan Harris talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about the persuasive techniques and tricks used by companies like Twitter, Google and Facebook to make people engage with them every day. Harris's movement wants tech companies to think more often about the ethics of their design decisions, and to value their users' attention. These design choices, Harris says, are often drive...

"The 4-Hour Workweek" and "Tools of Titans" author Tim Ferriss talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his newest book, which compiles the life advice of the "titans" from tech, business and entertainment Ferriss has interviewed on his podcast, "The Tim Ferriss Show." He explains how forays into education, neuroscience, tech entrepreneurship and dietary supplements led him to become a self-help aut...

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx talks to Recode's Johana Bhuiyan about his last week in office and what he would do if given more time. In addition to self-driving car and drone regulations, Foxx said he would like to see more rail projects across the country, and discusses the feasibility of Elon Musk's Hyperloop concept, a privately funded high-speed rail alternative. Foxx also dis...

Rent the Runway CEO and co-founder Jennifer Hyman talks with Recode's Kara Swisher and Jason Del Rey about her 50-year vision for changing consumer fashion habits. Now more than seven years old, Rent the Runway has six million female customers who rent designer clothes a la carte or three at a time via a $139 monthly subscription. Hyman also discusses the challenges she has faced as a female tech...

Color Genomics co-founder and CEO Othman Laraki talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about why we're on the verge of a healthcare revolution. Laraki, whose company tests buyers' genes for certain hereditary cancers, says the future of medicine will be defined by our ability to read data from our bodies. While most of that data used to be recorded on paper and stored at hospitals, now it's largely bein...

Social networking pioneer Orkut Büyükkökten talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about the eponymous social site, Orkut, which he built inside Google, and his new company, Hello. Büyükkökten says current social networks don't make it easy to meet new friends, and believes that Hello will introduce like-minded people to each other while encouraging them to be friendly and authentic. He also discusses w...

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his new book, "Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations." As technology and globalization get ever faster, Friedman says, humans should double down on the values, skills and behaviors that computers can't perform. Reacting to the rise of presid...

Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about why he covertly edited the posts of some Donald Trump supporters, and why he regrets it now. Huffman acknowledges his editing, which he conceived as a prank but many users saw as censorship, sowed distrust among the Reddit community that the company will have to win back. He also talks about the how Reddit is trying to...

AliveCor CEO Vic Gundotra talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his long career in tech, including his start as a college dropout at Microsoft and his seven years leading Google's mobile and social efforts. His current company helps consumers monitor their heart health via a portable EKG device that talks to their smartphones, and Gundotra says the potential of wearables and deep learning for hea...

Democratic political strategist Hilary Rosen and Republican corporate consultant Juleanna Glover talk with Recode's Kara Swisher about how Donald Trump's election to the presidency will affect the tech and media industries over the next four to eight years. They discuss which elements of the tech-forward Obama presidency are likely to be unwound and the role Democrats can play despite GOP control...

The Bold Italic CEO Sunil Rajaraman talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about "This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley," a series of satirical articles that went viral earlier this year. Rajaraman set out to shine a light on some harsh truths most techies won't discuss openly, and the surprise success of his pieces has him thinking about adapting them into a book. He also discusses starting and then bein...

Tracy Kidder and Paul English, the author and subject of "A Truck Full of Money: One Man's Quest to Recover From Great Success," talk with Recode's Kara Swisher about English's dual life as a tech entrepreneur and philanthropist. English co-founded Kayak and, after selling it to Priceline, started another travel company called Lola. For Kidder, "Truck" is a return to tech several decades after his...

DJ Patil, America's first Chief Data Scientist, talks about his nearly two years in the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, working on initiatives around health care and policing. Patil grew up in Silicon Valley, and has worked at Skype, LinkedIn and eBay; he says that techies in the private sector should consider a "tour of duty" in the government to be one of their civic dutie...

On this special bonus episode of Recode Decode, we look back at our past guests' most insightful comments about diversity in tech and media. Interviewees including Chamath Palihapitiya, Samantha Bee and Dick Costolo explain why discrimination based on sex, age and ethnicity are so common, and what might be done to fix the problem. You can find the full interviews excerpted in this show at Recode.n...

Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley and CEO Jeff Glueck talk with Recode's Kara Swisher about how the location intelligence company is generating sellable data for partners like Apple, Uber and Twitter based on its users' check-ins. Glueck, who took over as CEO for Crowley in January 2015, compares the company's new business model to "Robin Hood" because it simultaneously helps small businesses a...

Revolution Growth founder and partner Ted Leonsis talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about being a longtime executive at AOL and how the company changed dramatically when it merged with Time Warner in 2000. Leonsis says AOL correctly anticipated the social nature of the internet, but left several windows open for Google to beat it at its own game. After the merger, it had to turn its energies toward...

"Mr. Robot" creator Sam Esmail talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his hit TV show, whose star Rami Malek recently won an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a drama. Esmail says he grew up loving both movies and technology, and was disappointed by Hollywood's seeming inability to portray hackers in TV shows and movies authentically. The secret to the success of 'Mr. Robot,' he says, is that he'...

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about cooperation between government and the tech industry and the new challenges of the digital economy. Secretary Pritzker says artificial intelligence will upend many jobs, but the solution is to focus on retraining workers for new industries like cybersecurity, where American companies have hundreds of thousands of open...

Actor, producer and investor Ashton Kutcher talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his life as both a TV star and a tech obsessive. Kutcher, who starred in shows like "Two and a Half Men" and "That '70s Show," has invested over the past five years in companies like Uber, Airbnb and Square. But he passed on Snapchat — twice — because he hated the app's design and feared what would happen when it go...

Jon Favreau, the actor and director known for films such as "Swingers," "Iron Man" and "The Jungle Book," talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his new efforts in virtual reality, starting with the interactive short film "Gnomes & Goblins." Favreau says that VR is a powerful artists' tool, but advances in digital filmmaking won't replace actors, or the need for fundamental storytelling skills. He...

James Corden, host of "The Late Late Show" on CBS and viral video star, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about redesigning a talk show for the YouTube generation, built around segments like "Carpool Karaoke." Corden has a complicated relationship with technology, and worries that the internet's appearance of freedom of choice is making us all more narrow-minded. He also chats about encounters with...

Cowboy Ventures founder and managing partner Aileen Lee, previously a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about being one of the few female venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. After leaving Kleiner Perkins in 2012, Lee set out to amass data about the small percentage of startups that become breakout success stories, and she coined the term "unicorn" to...

Tusk Holdings CEO Bradley Tusk talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his unique political consulting firm Tusk Ventures, which trades equity in companies like Uber, FanDuel and DraftKings for regulatory guidance. Tusk previously worked for former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, and explains in detail how Uber undermined the city's current mayor, Bill de Blasio, with a series of blistering...

In this special bonus episode, Margrethe Vestager, Europe's Commissioner for Competition, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about the high-profile cases she has brought against Apple and Google for alleged unfair tax breaks and antitrust violations, respectively. Vestager says "there is a limit to everything," including the assistance successful companies should get from the government, and their a...