Welcome to our end-of-year Decoder special! Senior producers Kate Cox and Nick Statt here. It’s been a big year for us, featuring nearly 100 episodes, a new YouTube channel, an ad-free podcast feed, and some fantastic guest hosts while Nilay was on parental leave. We’ve had a lot on our plate!
We’ve also received plenty of great questions and feedback from you, our audience. It’s become a tradition for us to flip the script on Nilay for our last episode of the year, so we gathered your insights on topics like CarPlay, suggestions for Monday episode guests, and, of course, AI. Recently, we got a lot of inquiries about how Decoder is produced, what topics we should tackle in the future, and our approach to the show’s format and structure.
Today, we welcomed Nilay back to Decoder to ask him all these questions and get his take on the past year: what he’s enjoyed, what he wants to improve, and how he plans to shape Decoder in the coming year.
Last year, our top two most frequently asked questions were straightforward. First: Why isn’t Decoder on YouTube? Thankfully, we’ve resolved that! We launched the Decoder YouTube channel in October and now publish full video episodes weekly, starting with our classic Monday interview format. We also frequently heard requests for an ad-free podcast option, and we’re pleased to announce that since October, Verge subscribers have access to ad-free audio feeds.
We’ve received some feedback about making our Thursday explainer episodes available in full video as well. Don’t worry — we’re on it. It’s a bit more complex and resource-heavy, so it’ll take some time to smooth out the details. Plus, we’re excited to experiment more with format, video, and even live production in 2026. (Join us live at CES on January 7, at the Brooklyn Bowl!)
If you’d like to check out some past Decoder episodes or news stories mentioned in this episode, take a look at the links below. Happy New Year, and thanks for tuning in! We’ll be back with all-new episodes in mid-January.
Questions or comments about this episode? Reach out at [email protected]. We genuinely read every email!
