Decoder with Nilay Patel

Author Walter Isaacson talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his new biography of Renaissance artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci, which he describes has a "culmination" of themes he explored in past books about Ada Lovelace, Ben Franklin and Steve Jobs. Isaacson explains how da Vinci's pursuit of the intersection of art and science made him who he was, and how his life's story can inform our thinking today about innovation and technology. He also dissects the biology of da Vinci's most famous work, the Mona Lisa, and explains why the portrait took 16 years to paint. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

O’Reilly Media founder Tim O’Reilly talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about his new book, “WTF? What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us.” O'Reilly argues that society could be headed for either the good type of “WTF” — one of amazement — or the bad type, one of dismay. Avoiding the latter, O’Reilly says, will mean dramatically rethinking politics, finance and employment; today's prevailing philosophy of profit-above-all-else could be setting the world up for a period of “war and revolution and great instability.” He also talks about why, even though tech companies are easy to demonize in Washington, the bigger villain may be Wall Street. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about how YouTube has grown since she assumed that role in 2014, and how it's making original content differently than other video platforms like Netflix. Previously Google's advertising boss, she met Larry Page and Sergey Brin when the two founders rented her garage and turned it into office space. Plus, Wojcicki talks at length about the firing of James Damore, whose viral internal memo exposed a major rift in Silicon Valley over the perceptions of female engineers' capabilities — and an ongoing debate about free speech in the workplace. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ilene Chaiken, the creator of “The L Word” and showrunner for “Empire,” talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher at the 2017 edition of Werk It, WNYC’s women-in-podcasting festival. Chaiken explains how she got “The L Word” made at Showtime, even though the network initially laughed at the idea of a show about lesbians in Hollywood, and how became executive producer of the hit Hulu series “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which she had tried to adapt for years. Now in an exclusive deal at 20th Century Fox, Chaiken says the massive reach of broadcast TV is still an important cultural force, and predicts that the digital platforms like Amazon, Hulu, Netflix and Apple will take turns being big award winners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

ShondaLand CEO Shonda Rhimes, the TV producer behind hits like "Grey's Anatomy," "Scandal" and "How to Get Away With Murder," talks with Recode's Kara Swisher at the 2017 Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit. Rhimes says she took a four-year exclusive deal with Netflix because it offers her more creative freedom and new challenges, although her six existing shows will continue at ABC. She also talks about how she chooses who she hires, her amazement at people in Hollywood who don't understand diversity and why she has backed off of social media. Plus: Why ShondaLand.com has started offering magazine-like articles, including interviews with people like Michelle Obama and Billie Jean King. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"Blade Runner 2049" actor Jared Leto talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about portraying Niander Wallace, a trillionaire tech mogul. By the start of the new movie, Wallace has saved humanity from starvation and rebooted the development of humanlike robots, known as Replicants. Leto, who is also a musician and tech investor, says he chooses to be optimistic about the future in spite of the movie's dystopian tone and explains how he approached playing an antagonist to Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford. (Spoiler warning: This episode discusses the themes and story of "Blade Runner 2049," including the fate of some of the major characters.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Investor Ellen Pao talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about her new book, “Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change,” which chronicles Pao’s 2015 court battle against her former employer, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. She reflects on why the gender discrimination lawsuit ultimately failed, and why Pao believes it nevertheless laid the groundwork for future whistleblowers like ex-Uber employee Susan Fowler. She also talks about her ensuing work as interim CEO of Reddit, what she thinks of the controversial memo written by former Google engineer James Damore, and why we shouldn’t take tech companies’ proclamations of “free speech” idealism at face value. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sally Quinn, the author of "Finding Magic: A Spiritual Memoir," talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about her new book and her career in journalism. Quinn got her start covering the Washington, D.C., party circuit for the Washington Post under its then-Editor Ben Bradlee, whom she later married. Quinn became an atheist early in her chilhood, but her views of religion evolved over time, leading her to become the Post's religion columnist and one of its first bloggers. She says the inspiration for her book came from how — in Bradlee's final years, when he developed dementia — she realized that taking care of him gave her life meaning. Plus: The real story behind the now-infamous "hexes" Quinn used to cast on people and why Donald Trump's real religion is the "prosperity gospel." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman and Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold talk with Recode's Kara Swisher at the 2017 Texas Tribune Festival in Austin. Both known for their coverage of Donald Trump's campaign and White House, they talk about how they accidentally became Trump reporters and what others in the media get wrong about the president. They also explain how they, as journalists, use Twitter — which Haberman calls "the anger video game" — and what they would be reporting on if they were not on the Trump beat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Maha Ibrahim, a general partner at Canaan Partners, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about her more than 17 years in venture capital, joining Canaan right before the first dot-com bubble burst. Ibrahim says a lot of her fellow investors have only ever known tech as an "up and to the right" industry and she's concerned by the intense rate at which many companies are burning capital, even after they go public. She also talks about the recent backlash against men in tech who have sexually harassed women, calling Reid Hoffman's decency pledge "the lowest of low bars." The bigger challenge for women going forward, Ibrahim explains, will be helping other women succeed even though there is no obvious female equivalent in tech of Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices