Inside The Hive With Nick Bilton

One minute, Dennis Crowley, the co-founder of Foursquare, was building a little app in a New York City coffee shop, and the next he was being wined and dined by every VC in Silicon Valley, being offered hundreds of millions of dollars for his young startup, and seeing the valuation of his company head towards a billion dollars. Crowley takes us through the tumultuous, breakneck, insane ride of running a startup. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Gabe Sherman, who has known Hope, Lewandowski and Trump since the nascent days of the campaign trail, joins us to explain what the latest round of chaos inside the White House means, how Jared Kushner might be the next to get booted, and why Hope Hicks has left the building.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The students behind the #neverAgain movement are more eloquent than any politician, and are totally unphased by Trump and his online trolls. Abigail Tracy, who covers Washington for The Hive, joins us to explain how a group of high schoolers could take down Trump, how they could turn Florida blue, and why the NRA might have finally met it’s match. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Sam Harris, a world renowned author, neuroscientist and atheist, joins us to explain why there is no such thing as God, how consciousness is the most incredible invention in the universe, why politicians like Mike Pence and Donald Trump pretend they're religious because it helps gets votes, and how artificial intelligence could end up destroying humanity and replacing us with sentient robots that are nicer and smarter than us -- if we're lucky. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Description: For the last year, Trump has bragged about the rise of the stock market, taking credit for every upswing since Obama left office. Yet this week, when the bottom fell out of the market, Trump blamed — yep — the media. Bess Levin, The Hive’s Wall Street corespondent, explains why this could be the beginning of the recession we’ve all been expecting, how Trump will try to blame everyone else for the declines, and she helps rank the Trump administration’s finance appointees in order of worst, dumb, and the devil himself. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It really is even worse than you thought, notes David Cay Johnston, author of a new book with a slightly more elegant title. Johnston explains how Trump is systematically, and intentionally, dismantling the way the U.S. government works to help boost his own ego. From Scott Pruitt rolling back regulations that will destory the environment, to Betsy DeVos disemboweling the country's education system, the actions of the Trump administration are going to have devastating impacts on the next generation. But Johnston does have one glimmer of hope... Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Donald Trump has turned back more climate-related safety measures in the past year than any president in history. Jeff Orlowski, the Oscar short-listed filmmaker behind "Chasing Coral" and "Chasing Ice," joins us to lay out the implications of our warming planet, how most of the coral reefs on earth are dying, and why that is even more terrifying than you think. Orlowski explains that we could be at the beginning of the sixth mass extinction. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The Hive’s tech reporter and millennial expert, Maya Kosoff, joins us to explain why the government may soon start regulating social media companies, why you should delete Facebook from your phone ASAP, whether Snap will survive the assault of Mark Zuckerberg, and why the White House should build a “fake” alternate Twitter that only Trump sees, replete with fake likes and fake retweets, and maybe even a fake Oval Office. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

At this year's CES in Las Vegas, robots of all shapes and sizes were on display. There were robots that can fold your clothes, others that can clean your windows, walk your dog or make you an omelet. There were social robots and butler robots. Big robots and little bitty robots. On this week's show, we went to Vegas and talked to two experts about the world of tomorrow, hearing how robotics, driverless cars, and artificial intelligence are going to change everything we touch and do in the not-too-distant future. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Terrified by Trump's latest nuclear tweet? Worried that Kim Jung-Un might fall asleep on his little button and blow us all up? This podcast will probably terrify you even more. Kal Raustiala, Director of the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, and an expert on foreign affairs and international law, joins me this week to explain how close we are to global annihilation, why artificial intelligence could prove to be more dangerous than a global thermonuclear war, and why California should just call it quits and secede from the union. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If you think 2017 was tough to get through, just wait until next year. In the year’s final podcast, Nick Bilton and Jon Kelly offer predictions for 2018. Among them: Will the Dems actually win back the House? Will Bitcoin still be around 12 months from now? Could the #meToo movement finally reach the shores of Silicon Valley? And will Trump finally begin his inevitable passage into oblivion? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Here's a fact for you: If you bought $1 — yes, one single dollar — of Bitcoin in March, 2013, it would be worth $6 million today. Joyce Kim, who has been in the cryptocurrency game since the very beginning, joins us this week to explain what is really going on with all these digital currencies, why they are rising so rapidly, if you should own them (or if you already do, if you should sell them), if there's a Bitcoin Bubble, and why all the nerds in Silicon Valley can't stop talking about this digital gold. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Tim Wu might be the most prescient person in tech: he invented the term “net neutrality,” and predicted the global dominance the Internet would have on society. He joins us this week to explain why Facebook is the most likely tech company to be regulated by the government, how Donald Trump used technology to hijack our attention (and how we’ll all reclaim it back), what happens now that net neutrality has been rolled back, and why everyone should spend at least one week alone in the desert. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Each week, the stock market reaches all-time highs, and Donald Trump takes all the credit. But is his insanity and destruction going to lead to a crash of biblical proportions, or possibly to a recession akin to 2008? My guest this week, William D. Cohan, a former banker-turned journalist, seems to think so. Hear him explain why Wall Street should be worried by the actions of the man they hate, and how everyday Americans are going to be affected. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For the past two decades, Reza Aslan has been studying religions from all over the globe, and talking to people who believe in one God, many Gods, or no God at all. He joins us this week to explain the origins of belief, why faith is ultimately a good thing for society, and how he got fired from CNN for calling Donald Trump a “piece of s**t.” (A spokesperson for CNN declined to comment on Aslan’s depiction of his dismissal.) Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Do Donald Trump's provocations of Kim Jong-Un have you scared? You might not be scared enough. Right now, U.S. generals are performing war games exploring how to retaliate in the event of a nuclear attack on American soil. Other government employees are evaluating what would happen if Russian hackers knocked out our power grids; others still are trying to stop ISIS from recruiting a new generation of suicide fighters on Twitter; meanwhile, the Navy Seals are slowly becoming obsolete in a virtual world of ubiquitous and disruptive terror.  Haroon Ullah, who spent nearly a decade at The State Department, and recently authored the book Digital World War, joins us to explain how close we really are to World War III, how modern day warfare is unlike anything we've seen before, and why America is losing its standing on the world stage. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Gwyneth Paltrow joins us to explain what acting has in common with running a company; why she doesn’t miss the movie business and won’t ever go back; how Goop (if all goes well) could go public one day; and how relieving (and shocking) it’s been to finally see some of the worst men in Hollywood finally fall. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

After the Democratic wins in New Jersey and Virginia, this week, could Texas become increasingly blue in 2018? Jay Hulings, who is running to repressent the state’s 23rd congressional district, joins us to explain how The Lone Star state could become a blue state (or at least purple) next year, how people along the Rio Grande really feel about “The Wall,” and why, as a gun-loving Democrat, people like him could re-write the future of the left. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Kyle Pope spent 18 months running the New York Observer under Jared Kusher. In that time, he was forced to contend with more problems than he had ever anticipated when he took the job. Jared's father (who Jared calls "daddy") allegedly wanted his son to order "hit pieces" on bankers he didn't like; Jared's mother complained about the decor in people's offices and tried to have a rug removed; and on one occasion, Kyle was forced to have a sit down with The Donald himself. Pope joins us today to tell these stories and more, and explain what the future might look like for Jared and Ivanka when this all comes crashing down. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The past decade has seen the biggest disruption in American business in a hundred years — and its only just the beginning. Scott Galloway, author of the new book “The Four,” joins me to explain how Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon, grew into such massive companies. He lays out which of them is the least likely to survive (ahem, Facebook), and why those that do (ahem, Amazon) may end up in a war with the U.S. governments over regulation. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices