‘All chaos and panic’: Nilay solutions your burning Decoder questions

Welcome to our end-of-year Decoder particular! Senior producers Kate Cox and Nick Statt right here. We’ve had a giant 12 months, together with almost 100 episodes, a brand new YouTube channel, an ad-free podcast feed, and a slate of nice visitor hosts whereas Nilay was on parental depart. It’s been rather a lot.

We’ve additionally had quite a lot of nice questions and feedback this 12 months from you, our viewers. It’s now an annual custom for us to show the tables on Nilay for our closing episode of the 12 months, so we pulled collectively all of the suggestions we’ve obtained on matters like CarPlay, Monday episode visitor recommendations, and — after all — AI. We additionally obtained quite a lot of nice questions over the previous couple of weeks asking about how Decoder is put collectively, what matters we should always give attention to sooner or later, and the way we take into consideration the format and construction of the present itself.

So as we speak, we welcomed Nilay to Decoder, to grill him on all these questions and extra and likewise to get his ideas on the previous 12 months: What he’s preferred, what he desires to enhance, and the way he’s making choices for Decoder within the new 12 months.

After we did this final 12 months, our high two most ceaselessly requested questions have been very simple. First: Why isn’t Decoder on YouTube? Fortunately, we fastened that one. We launched the Decoder YouTube channel in October, and we now publish full video episodes each week, beginning with our traditional Monday interview format. We additionally bought requested rather a lot about an ad-free podcast possibility final 12 months, and we’re glad to say that additionally since October, Verge subscribers now have entry to ad-free audio feeds.

We’ve obtained some suggestions about making our Thursday explainer episodes full video, too. Belief us — we’re engaged on it. It’s a bit extra sophisticated and resource-intensive, and so it’s going to take a while to iron out the kinks. Past that, we’re very excited to experiment extra with format, video, and even reside manufacturing in 2026. (Come be a part of us reside at CES on January 7, on the Brooklyn Bowl!)

Should you’d like to take a look at among the previous Decoder episodes and information tales we talked about on this episode, try the hyperlinks beneath. Completely satisfied New Yr, and thanks for listening! We’ll be again with all new episodes in mid-January.

_{Questions or feedback about this episode? Hit us up at decoder@theverge.com. We actually do learn each e-mail!}