Why the current tech backlash feels different

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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SPEAKER_2 (0:35)

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Nick Statt (1:52)

Hello, and welcome to Decoder, Nilay's show about big ideas and other problems. This is Nick Statt, Senior Producer, and I'm joined by our brand new supervising producer, Gregg Ott.

Gregg Ott (2:03)

Hi, Nilay. Nilay is here too. He is the person who hosts the show, and his name is also in the show, so it makes sense.

Nilay Patel (2:09)

It's true. We don't insistently say my name in the show enough. We should do it all the time.

I should do it. Welcome to Decoder with Nilay Patel.

Gregg Ott (2:18)

You have your name behind you in the video. We could get you a name tag too. All those sports announcers, these have the CBS logo on their chest, and they're on their breast pocket.

Nilay Patel (2:26)

I'm not yet at branded polos. But actually, no, even thinking about it for one second, and we never will be, is what I would say.

Gregg Ott (2:35)

Like Nick was saying, this is Nilay's show, and we're doing a Mailbag episode. This is where we go through all the feedback.

Because you listen to the end of every episode, we know you do. We do mention that we go through every single email that we get. Nick, you can verify that. We get a ton of email, and we do read through all of it. Is that true?

Nick Statt (2:54)

We now get YouTube comments. We get many, many Verge comments. We get Spotify comments. And the Spotify comments, I read everyone, because those are specifically pretty pointed.

Gregg Ott (3:05)

Yeah, they're kind of like uncut gems. Like because they're trying to build this little community, it's like, somebody might read this because it only gets like six comments, as opposed to like 600 for a YouTube video.

Nick Statt (3:15)

But we last did a Mailbag episode in April, and we said we were going to do more of these, so we're back again. This is September. We've had a few months. We've had a lot of really big interviews. So yeah, let's just get into it.

Gregg Ott (3:26)

All right, we're going to kick things off with the software brain video you put out. This was one of the biggest things that people have commented on. And it is far away, like the most talked about episode in the past six months. Hundreds of comments on the Verge website, hundreds of comments on YouTube, single to double-digit comments on Spotify, and lots and lots of emails.

One thing we wanted to talk about, though, is something a reader brought up about the idea of the Nilay rant. And you effectively pulling out your inner Dennis Miller and really giving us your take on something. And for this one, one listener wrote, just listen to the people do not yearn for automation. And all I can say is the people do yearn for more Nilay rants. So we want to know like what is the origin of this type of rant? And then how much of like the show's DNA do you think is built around this idea of you giving us the rant and just like the idea of basically you, you've given us your hot take on something really, really well thought out as opposed to like the interviews we usually do.