Canva CEO Melanie Perkins is happy to provide designers alternatives to Adobe

Today, I’m talking with Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe. RJ was on the show last September when we chatted at the Code Conference, but the past 10 months have seen a whirlwind of change throughout the car industry and at Rivian in particular. This year alone, the company unveiled five new models in its lineup and also just announced a $5 billion joint venture with Volkswagen. We got into all that and more.  If you’re a Decoder listener, you’ve heard me talk to a lot of car CEOs on the show, but it’s rare to talk to a car company founder, and RJ was game to talk about basically anything — even extremely minor feature requests I pulled from the forums. It’s a fun one. Links: Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe isn't scared of the Cybertruck | Decoder VW will invest up to $5 billion in Rivian as part of new EV joint venture | The Verge Rivian blazed a trail with its adventure EVs — can it stay on top? | The Verge Rivian R2 revealed: a $45,000 electric off-roader for the masses | The Verge Rivian surprises with R3 and R3X electric SUVs | The Verge Rivian puts its Georgia factory plans on pause | The Verge Rivian’s R1 vehicles are getting a gut overhaul | The Verge Rivian R1S review: king of the mountain | The Verge Rivian’s long, narrow road to profit | WSJ Tesla’s Share of U.S. Electric Car Market Falls Below 50% | NYT Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23965790 Credits:  Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week I’m talking to Matthew Ball, who was last on the show in 2022 to talk about his book “The Metaverse: How it Will Revolutionize Everything.” It’s 2024 and it’s safe to say that has not happened yet. But Matt’s still on the case — in fact he just released an almost complete update of the book, now with the much more sober title, “Building the Spatial Internet.” Matt and I talked a lot about where the previous metaverse hype cycle landed us, and what there is to learn from these boom and bust waves. We talked about the Apple Vision Pro quite a bit; if you read or watched my review when it came out, you’ll know I think the Vision Pro is almost an end point for one set of technologies. I wanted to know if Matt felt the same and what needs to happen to make all of this more mainstream and accessible. Links:  Fully revised and updated edition to the “The Metaverse” | W.W. Norton Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it’s not | The Verge Apple’s Vision Pro: five months later | Vergecast Is the metaverse going to suck? A conversation with Matthew Ball | Decoder Interviewing Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth on the Metaverse, VR/AR, AI | Matthew Ball Interviewing Epic CEO Tim Sweeney and author Neal Stephenson | Matthew Ball An Interview with Matthew Ball about Vision Pro and the state of gaming | Stratechery Tim Sweeney explains how the metaverse might actually work | The Verge Fortnite is winning the metaverse | The Verge Is the Metaverse Just Marketing? | NYT Credits:  Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, I’m talking with Arati Prabhakar, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. That’s a cabinet-level position, where she works as the chief science and tech advisor to President Biden. Arati and her team of about 140 people at the OSTP are responsible for advising the president on not only big developments in science but also about major innovations in tech, much of which come from the private sector.  Her job involves guiding regulatory efforts, government investment, and setting priorities around big-picture projects like Biden’s cancer moonshot and combating climate change. More recently, Arati has been spending a lot of time talking about the future of AI and semiconductors, so I had the opportunity to dig into both of those topics with her as the generative AI boom continues and the results of the CHIPS Act become more visible.  One note before we start: I sat down with Arati last month, just a couple of days before the first presidential debate and its aftermath, which swallowed the entire news cycle. So you’re going to hear us talk a lot about President Biden’s agenda and the White House’s policy record on AI, among other topics. But you’re not going to hear anything about the president, his age, or the presidential campaign. Links:  Biden’s top science adviser resigns after acknowledging demeaning behavior | NYT Teen girls confront an epidemic of deepfake nudes in schools | NYT Senate committee passes three bills to safeguard elections from AI | The Verge The RIAA versus AI, explained | The Verge Lawyers say OpenAI could be in real trouble with Scarlett Johansson | The Verge Barack Obama on AI, free speech, and the future of the internet | Decoder Meet the Woman Who Showed President Biden ChatGPT | WIRED Biden releases AI executive order | The Verge Biden’s science adviser explains the new hard line on China | WashPo Where the CHIPS Act money has gone | The Verge Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23961278 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today I’m talking to Nicholas Thompson, the CEO of The Atlantic. I was really excited to talk to Nick. Like so many media CEOs, including Vox Media’s, he just signed a deal allowing OpenAI to use The Atlantic’s vast archives as training data, but he also has a rich background in tech. Before he was the CEO of The Atlantic, Nick was the editor-in-chief of Wired, where he set his sights on AI reporting well before anyone else. I was also really interested in asking Nick about the general sense that the AI companies are getting vastly more than they’re giving with these sorts of deals — yes, they’re paying some money, but I’ve heard from so many of you that the money might now be the point — that there’s something else going on here – that maybe allowing creativity to get commodified this way will come with a price tag so big money can never pay it back. If there is anyone who could get into it with me on that question, it’s Nick. Links:  Vox Media and The Atlantic sign content deals with OpenAI | The Verge Journalists “deeply troubled” by OpenAI’s content deals with Vox, The Atlantic | Ars Technica What the RIAA lawsuits mean for AI and copyright | The Verge Perplexity plagiarized our story about how Perplexity Is a bullshit machine | Wired How to stop Perplexity and save the web from bad AI | Platformer The text file that runs the internet | The Verge OpenAI, WSJ owner News Corp strike content deal valued at over $250 Million | WSJ The media bosses fighting back against AI — and the ones cutting deals — WashPo The New York Times spent $1 million so far in its OpenAI lawsuit | The Verge AI companies have all kinds of arguments against paying for copyrighted content | The Verge Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s almost the Fourth of July, and that means it’s time for our annual grilling episode. This year, I’m talking with Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov, who has big plans for using very modern fan-based marketing techniques to expand the market for the company’s old-fashioned, fire-burning, aspirational product.  Links:  Big Green Egg Appoints a New CEO | CookOut News Big Green Egg 50th Anniversary 1974-2024 | Big Green Egg Yep, Big Green Egg Just Made a Beer Keg | Gear Patrol AI could kill creative jobs that ‘shouldn’t have been there in the first place,’ OpenAI CTO says | Fortune Campfires, explained | Vox An ‘Epidemic’ of Loneliness Threatens Health of Americans | Scientific American  RIP: Here are 70 things millennials have killed | Mashable “Genius of the AND” | Jim Collins Keurig's attempt to 'DRM' its coffee cups totally backfired | The Verge A Look at the Danny Meyer Documentary The Restaurateur | Eater Transcript:  https://www.theverge.com/e/23952121 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices