Inside The Hive With Nick Bilton

On the anniversary of the coronavirus changing everything, Harvard epidemiology professor Willam Hanage stops by Inside the Hive to break down the new CDC guidelines, vaccine messaging and myths, and what we should all be doing to prepare for this next phase. Plus, co-hosts Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox dissect the royal family drama and ultimate queen, Oprah. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, Inside the Hive welcomes special guest Jon Batiste, leader of the Stay Human Band on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Hot off his Golden Globe win for his work on the score of Pixar’s Soul, Batiste's latest album, We Are, represents a vivid turn from straight jazz into a joyful, danceable pop and neo-soul. It's also a bold declaration of conscience: catalyzed by the Black Lives Matter movement of last summer, when he rallied protestors with an ad hoc street band, Batiste wanted to deliver a personal statement on his own experience as a Black man in America. “We have to hold ourselves accountable to the things that we profess to believe,” he says. Batiste collaborated with 200 musicians, producers, and friends, including Quincy Jones, Mavis Staples, and even author Zadie Smith, with whom he held regular singing sessions over Zoom at the height of the pandemic. Here he recounts his own musical evolution, from Louisiana, where he grew up in a storied musical family, to New York, where he studied ja

On this week's episode, Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox extoll the virtues of having time to talk about actual issues--confirmation processes, the minimum wage, Potato Heads. Plus: what the future could look like for the Republican party and a very special superfan email that will make your week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In this double feature episode of Inside the Hive, cohosts Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox interview rising Democratic star Joe Neguse, Congressman from Colorado, about last week’s impeachment trial of Donald Trump and what was and was not achieved after Republicans refused to convict. Neguse takes us behind the scenes with the impeachment managers, including the controversial decision not to call witnesses before a final vote, and considers what lessons Democrats should draw from it. That's followed by Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who talks to Hagan about the state of emergency in Texas and the intransigence of his former rival for Senate, Ted Cruz. O’Rourke lays into Cruz, who flew to Cancún during statewide blackouts: "I don't know how much we were expecting from him to begin with,” he says. “That guy wants nothing to do with government, or at least our form of it.” Whether voters, suffering from food shortages following a freak snow storm, will make the GOP pay—and create an opening for O’Rourke to run for

On this week's episode of Inside the Hive, NBC News's Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins talk about the roots of the disinformation that gets planted online, fed on social networks and tech platforms, and spread all the way to Washington. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, joins Inside the Hive to talk about his campaign to steer the GOP away from Donald Trump, the QAnon conspiracy cult, and the insurrection of January 6. In advance of an impeachment trial in the Senate, Kinzinger has allied himself with Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney and voted to remove Trump ally and QAnon adherent Marjorie Taylor Greene from her congressional committees. But he acknowledges a tough battle ahead, not least the struggle to bring Trump’s base out of the “fog” of disinformation, comparing the current crossroads to the morning after a Friday-night “bender”: “The easy answer is to drink a Bloody Mary and just feel a little better and start up again,” he says. “Or you can take a look at what you did and…bear the pain a little bit.” The congressman recently started a PAC to support “country first” Republicans and predicts that sanity will prevail and Trump’s support will deteriorate within six months. “[Trump] doesn't have Twitter, he's not blindi

Nick Bilton stops by Inside the Hive to talk about his upcoming HBO documentary, Fake Famous, about a social media experiment that explores the influencer economy, but not before discussing all the ways in which people are trying to get COVID-19 vaccines, and how Joe Biden’s administration is trying to correct course. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, Inside the Hive co-host Joe Hagan talks to New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow about his provocative new book, The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto, which proposes a reverse migration of young Black people from northern cities to the South to try replicating what Stacy Abrams achieved in Georgia in the 2020 presidential and congressional races. Post-Civil Rights empowerment for Black populations has failed to materialize, argues Blow, with racism as pernicious, if not more so, in the “liberal” north as the south. The only way for Blacks to claim true power, he says, is through self determination—creating large Black population centers in places like Atlanta and turning the political tide in their direction. Blow paints a searing portrait of fair-weather liberals whose BLM protests last summer he likens to "a social justice Coachella” that ultimately failed to deliver policy changes. “Somehow Black people are supposed to pat white people on the back and say, ‘You're getting there, I'll k

On this week's episode of Inside the Hive, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shaprio joins Emily Jane Fox to discuss what he's doing to hold violent rioters accountable, why he thinks impeachment is essential, and how to protect democracy going forward into a post-Trump era. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, Inside the Hive welcomes Marc Elias, the lawyer who defended the election results against the Trump campaign’s assault, winning 62 out of 63 court cases in multiple states. Despite the fraud claims of seven senators and 121 members of congress who rebelled against the certification of Joe Biden's win this week, Elias says “not a single judge found a single vote that was fraudulent. None. Zero.” The bloodshed at the Capitol on Wednesday was more predictable than it was shocking, he says, and “the Republicans are even now still invested in trying to salvage the kernel of Trumpism.” What follows is an in-depth conversation with the election lawyer at the front lines of history. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Our good friend Nick Bilton stops by for the first episode of the year, to usher in the new, dissect the old, and resolve what will and should look different. We resolve to mention President Trump less, talk about how all politics are local, what excites us about the new administration, and discuss what we're most looking forward to covering in our reporting. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For the final episode of this very tough year, co-hosts Emily Jane Fox and Joe Hagan go through what they read, watched, listened to, and loved over the last 12 months.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For years, Donald Trump's personal attorney had to live in Donald Trump's head. He knew his every move. He understood his every action and reaction. On this week's episode of Inside the Hive, he talks with co-host Emily Jane Fox about what he's sure Trump will do next, what investigations hang in the balance, and whether he thinks they'll ever speak again. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In 1977, Jimmy Carter entered the White House with as much public goodwill as any president in modern times (an 80% approval rating) on the promise of restoring decency through political restraint and shared sacrifice. Sound familiar? On this week’s episode of Inside the Hive, Joe Hagan talks to historian Rick Perlstein about the latest edition to his spectacular three-volume history of the modern right wing, Reaganland: America’s Right Turn 1976-1980, which documents the presidency of Carter and the emergence of Ronald Reagan in the wake of Watergate. When the bill came due for Carter's “ideological profligacy” of aiming to please everyone, Perlstein says, Carter crashed and Reagan rose to power on a strategy of “organized discontent,” building the reactionary coalitions that would haunt America for the next four decades. Perlstein’s history is a blueprint of the politics that brought us Trump—and a cautionary tale for President-elect Joe Biden. "We can’t change the past,” says Perlstein, "but we can live wi

The Massachusetts AG joined this week’s episode of Inside the Hive to talk about taking on the Trump administration, handling election interference, and how to transition to the next chapter. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this week’s episode, we are lucky enough to share the conversation between President Obama and Jesmyn Ward, which is featured in the latest issue of Vanity Fair. They talk about his new memoir, the state of our country, and the process of writing truths about themselves. For this listen—and so many things—we have a lot to be grateful for.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jake Tapper, chief Washington correspondent for CNN, returns to “Inside the Hive” for an in-depth conversation on the state of the media in these bitter, waning days of the Trump era. While Trump and his legal team spin outlandish conspiracies to reverse the legitimate election of Joe Biden, Tapper separates fact from fiction, casts skepticism on a Trump “coup,” and considers the long-term damage Trump’s war on reality has done to American life. How much is the media—including CNN—culpable for his rise? Will his political influence stay alive or decline when he finally leaves office? And will the media, addicted to the ratings his chaos provides, continue to empower him with attention? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this week’s podcast, cohosts Emily Jane Fox and Joe Hagan game out the political future of the Trump machine in the aftermath of Joe Biden’s decisive electoral victory. While Trump drums up hysteria about a coup to fan the passions of his minions—prepping, no doubt, for a right-wing media company to challenge Fox News—the rest of the media faces a reckoning: Will we continue to breathe life into Trump’s reality show by indulging his 24/7 madness with cameras and microphones? Will Jared and Ivanka manage to sneak back into Upper East Side society or will they be pecked to death by angry socialites? As the nation teeters between the political chaos of Trumpism and a cooler, saner Bidenesque calm, we have a painful postmortem to conduct, but also, for the first time in a long time, hope.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The election came and went and we are here to talk it all through, break it all down, and feel our way through what may come next. Co-hosts Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox go over what the polls and pundits missed, the cooling effect of a President Biden, and the impacts of the Trump derangement syndrome we're all suffering from.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this week’s episode of Inside the Hive, co-hosts Emily Jane Fox and Joe Hagan ask the question: If this reality-TV presidency was scripted, how might it end? Expanding on a special project published in the Hive this week—in which Susan Orlean, Tom Perrotta, Anthony Scaramucci, Alexandra Petri and others imagine a Trump-era “finale”—the hosts bring in special guest Lee Eisenberg, former head writer of The Office (and Hive-famous financée to Fox), to discuss how a writer’s room in Hollywood might build a bookend to the series—or, as the case may be, a cliffhanger to another season of Trumpian hell. In the spirit of both hope and realism, the hosts offer advice for surviving the next week and begin (carefully) imagining post-election possibilities for a nation desperate to wean itself from Trump’s show-and-awe dopamine hits.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices