Nilay Patel presses Sundar Pichai on Google’s AI reorganization, the rapid spread of Gemini and agents across search and software, and what those shifts mean for publishers, creators and the fragile idea of a common web. Pichai argues that Google is building toward more capable systems while insisting the open web remains essential, even as search grows more opinionated, personalized and self-contained.

A Friday roundtable weighs whether OpenAI and Anthropic are racing to public markets before their growth stories cool, while parsing the accounting, infrastructure bets and investor narratives beneath the AI boom. The conversation also skewers SpaceX’s far-fetched pitch for orbital data centers and treats commencement-season boos as a warning that the public is souring on Silicon Valley’s vision of automation.

A veteran enterprise sales leader argues that AI has changed the tempo of software selling more than its fundamentals. The conversation traces why enterprise customers still want hands-on change management, why AI-native buyers compress decisions into days, and why great go-to-market teams raise the floor with process without crushing the ceiling for human judgment.

A veteran software sales leader argues that AI has changed the tempo of selling far more than its fundamentals. Enterprise buyers still need opinionated partners, hands-on rollout help and trust built through real relationships, even as AI-native customers compress cycles into days and expect constant, asynchronous collaboration.

Nilay Patel and Liz Lopatto sort through the spectacle and legal debris of Musk v. Altman, a trial nominally about OpenAI’s nonprofit origins but really driven by Elon Musk’s bid to punish Sam Altman. Their conversation sketches a courthouse circus, a statute-of-limitations defeat, and an AI industry where dishonesty feels less disqualifying than fully priced in.

A conversation about how middle managers can move big ideas upward by framing problems in strategic terms, building coalitions, and anticipating resistance before they enter the room. Sue Ashford and Ellen Bailey break down the politics, emotional discipline, and practical persuasion required to turn insight from the middle into organizational change.

A Google executive and longtime labor economist argues that AI is more likely to reshape work than erase it, even as new forecasting data suggests a small but meaningful chance of far more severe disruption. The conversation pits Silicon Valley’s job-loss rhetoric against a slower, messier reality in which tasks automate faster than occupations, and policy failures may matter more than the technology itself.

Product leadership coach Petra Wille argues that strong leaders are still essential in an AI-scrambled workplace, even as tools tempt companies to flatten roles and mistake speed for judgment. She lays out the thinking behind her new product leadership wheel, a framework meant to help leaders assess how they spend their time, sharpen role clarity and build healthier, more intentional organizations.

Two longtime co-hosts finally record in person and use the occasion to take stock of work, ambition and the strange freedom of building together. Their conversation turns on optionality in the AI era, the difference between bootstrapping and playing someone else’s game, and the culture they are trying to design one week at a time.

As BuzzFeed sells a controlling stake to Byron Allen, outgoing CEO Jonah Peretti argues that digital media’s platform era collapsed into a deals business and bets AI can rebuild both the company and the products people use directly. The conversation turns over old wounds from Facebook’s broken promises to creator economics, then lands on an ambitious, still-fuzzy vision of BuzzFeed as an AI-powered media and social platform.

A lively Friday roundtable uses newly surfaced court documents to probe Satya Nadella’s unease with Microsoft’s OpenAI deal, then widens into a brisk survey of Google, Anthropic, Apple and the strange market logic of the AI race. The hosts also delight in a prank that passed off a real Monet as machine-made, using the backlash to ask what happens when taste, authorship and authenticity all get harder to pin down.

Figma’s CFO traces a rise from early-career finance hire to public-company executive, crediting luck, first-principles thinking and a willingness to grab the work no one else owned. The conversation widens into how finance leaders build trust, make bets in the AI era and prepare companies for the scrutiny of public markets long before an IPO.

Brendan Ballou argues that forced arbitration has become a private justice system, built by courts and terms of service that strip consumers and workers of meaningful recourse. The conversation links that quiet legal machinery to a broader crisis of corporate power, public corruption and the feeling that ordinary people are locked out of real accountability.

Neuroscientist and physician Mithu Storoni argues that in an AI-saturated workplace, human efficiency should be measured by the quality of ideas rather than the quantity of output. She explains how attention, creativity, learning, and even boredom follow distinct brain states that managers can better support through flexible schedules, protected focus time, and work designed around natural cognitive rhythms.

Casey Newton and Ella Marciano open a new Platformer series with survey data showing AI adoption is highest among managers and top earners, while junior workers and administrative staff remain more skeptical of its benefits. A later conversation with Box CEO Aaron Levie argues that enterprise software will be remade by agents, but that most jobs will shift rather than disappear as human work moves to the harder, higher-value last mile.

Molly Graham talks with former Facebook executive and Sundial co-founder Julie Zhu about treating risk as a craft rather than a personality trait. Their conversation moves from everyday acts of candor and feedback to the manager’s job of creating trust, shared values, and enough safety for people to make bets and learn from being wrong.

Joanna Stern joins Nilay Patel to talk through a year of living with AI, the gap between flashy demos and useful products, and the privacy costs hidden inside convenience. The conversation also turns to her leap from The Wall Street Journal to her new venture, New Things, and what it takes to build an independent tech-media business around YouTube, newsletters and a mainstream audience.

Eric Ries argues that good companies rarely collapse because of competition; they are more often hollowed out by governance, incentives and financial pressure that turn success into a liability. Drawing on examples from Anthropic, Novo Nordisk, Cloudflare and Philip Morris’s disastrous purchase of Vectura, he makes the case that founders must build mission protection into both culture and corporate structure before it is too late.

A sprawling Friday news roundtable connects Anthropic’s massive compute deal with SpaceX, the OpenAI trial’s newly public text messages, and a wave of AI-era layoffs. Beneath the gossip and spectacle runs a sharper argument over whether the boom is driven by real product demand, IPO maneuvering, and a genuine rewiring of how companies operate.

Bruce Daisley talks with journalist Kate Murphy about the elusive chemistry of human connection, and what her research into synchrony suggests about teamwork, meetings and the limits of digital communication. Their exchange moves from the contagion of a single workplace "bad apple" to the rare colleague whose presence can steady a room.