Inside the Hive by Vanity Fair

This week, cohosts Emily Jane Fox and Joe Hagan bring you important voices from two fronts of the ongoing struggle for justice after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. First, Fox interviews Maya Wiley, the Brooklyn-based civil rights activist and MSNBC legal analyst, who dissects and interprets the murder charges against four policemen involved in the killing, and explains how to reform policing in this country. Next, Joe Hagan interviews Brandi Collins-Dexter, the senior campaign director for Color of Change, the largest online civil rights group in America, to discuss the group’s years-long battle with Facebook over hate speech and disinformation, including the company’s attempts to discredit their work and last week’s contentious talks with Mark Zuckerberg about removing the President’s incendiary lies from the site.

Kushner, the President's son-in-law, is one of the Trump West Wing's only survivors, having outwitted, outplayed, and outlasted his rivals as he stayed in his father-in-law's good graces while keeping an eye on his comically large portfolio. But before he was finding peace in the Middle East, defining the Republican agenda, and handling a global pandemic, he was a lowly newspaper publisher. On this week's *Inside the Hive*, co-host Emily Jane Fox sits down with Tom McGeveran, Elizabeth Spiers, and *Vanity Fair's* own Michael Calderone, all former *New York Observer*-ites, to talk about Kushner's attitude towards the press, his favorite band and books, his arguing style and value system, and what he'll do next.

On this week’s episode, Joe Hagan talks to Crazy Rich Asians director Jon Chu and film editor Myron Kerstein to discuss the wrenching decision to push their new tent-pole film, the Lin Manuel Miranda musical In the Heights, to summer 2021 instead of opening on a streaming service. With movie production in Hollywood halted, studios and the producers, directors, actors and film crews they employ are groping for answers as to how films get made again, where their next paychecks will come from, and whether audiences will ever return to theaters in the numbers they once did. Jon Chu is betting that theater-goers will come back once the crisis has passed: "I have to believe in that. I can't give up. I can't give up on that dream. And so our job is to give reasons for it to exist."

On this week's episode of Inside the Hive, co-host Emily Jane Fox sits down with Sarah Feinberg, the Interim President of the New York City Transit Authority, to talk all things transit in the midst of coronavirus: how to keep 51,000 workers and millions of riders safe in the midst of a highly contagious virus, how the agency can make money if people stay working from home forever, and how the Trump administration has failed to protect the American public. 

On this week's episode of Inside the Hive, co-host Joe Hagan talks to Rebecca Traister, author of "Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger," about the Joe Biden/Tara Reade imbroglio, analyzing the thorny implications for the former VP's female allies, the problem with the #believewomen movement, and how Joe Biden might have better handled the allegation that he sexually assaulted Reade 27 years ago. Whatever Biden's shortcomings, the feminist columnist for The Cut vows she'll "crawl over broken glass" to vote for him in November.

This week, Emily Jane Fox and Joe Hagan are back for an interview with Danny Meyer, founder of Union Square Hospitality Group and Shake Shack. Meyer and Fox discuss the controversy around Shake Shack applying for—and returning—a $10 million Paycheck Protection Program loan and the wreckage restaurants are wading through to survive through COVID-19. Meyer elucidates the government’s many failures, his suggestions for helpful legislation, and what restaurants will look like once diners can return to full rooms and menus: which establishments will survive and what people will want to eat.

The first episode under new co-hosts Emily Jane Fox and Joe Hagan features an exclusive interview with Chris Matthews, former host of HARDBALL on MSNBC, who discusses with Hagan his controversial exit after 20 years and analyzes a presidential election thrown into chaos by the pandemic. Can Joe Biden break through? Was Bernie Sanders right? Why does Matthews prefer Amy Klobuchar over Stacey Abrams for Biden’s VP? An in-depth conversation on the “highly unpredictable” politics of 2020.

After 150 episodes, Nick Bilton is handing over the reigns of Inside the Hive to Vanity Fair’s Emily Jane Fox and Joe Hagan. In today’s episode, all three join together for a round-table discussion on Trump’s attempt to blame everyone—from Barack Obama to the World Health Organization—for his floundering response to COVID-19; how Joe Biden and the Democrats should respond; and if Americans have too much freedom (and an aversion to wearing masks) to truly stop the spread until there’s a cure. Stick around for a little heart-to-heart at the end, and—of course—a brief discussion about making sourdough bread in the middle of the apocalypse.

On this week's Inside the Hive we talk to Sydney Gressel, a nurse at UCSF's Benioff Hospital in San Francisco who has started a new nonprofit to help feed doctors and nurses around the country as they fight on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic. Then, Vanity Fair contributor Joe Hagan sits down with Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker to parse the Trump White House’s missteps in fighting the virus and how the state is trying to combat the disease. Finally, Nick sits down with Sarah Frier, a reporter for Bloomberg, to discuss her new book, "No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram," which gets into the details of how Instagram went from a scrappy startup to the most important social network in the world, and what tech companies are doing to help stop misinformation around COVID-19.

Is coronavirus on track to play out like the movie Contagion? Scott Z. Burns, the writer of the film, and Ian Lipkin, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, join Nick to explain how much of the research that went into the film is playing out in real time; how the states and countries that ignore social distancing will pay the ultimate price; why this particularly insidious virus is unlike anything we've seen in recent history; and how an FDA-approved vaccine could take a lot less time than we’ve been told.

Does Trump's response to COVID-19 hurt or help his reelection bid? Gabriel Sherman, Vanity Fair special correspondent, and Don Winslow, crime novelist, join Nick to talk about what's going on deep inside the White House, why Trump (thankfully!) can't fire Dr. Fauci, and how the media is responding to the Trump Coronapocalypse. Plus, a bonus discussion on Joe Biden, and if Andrew Cuomo could end up as the Democratic presidential pick in a draft nomination.

Are we nearing another Great Depression? Kai Ryssdal, host of Marketplace, joins Nick to explain how COVID-19 is going to decimate the global economy, how rapidly job loss will occur, and why this is unlike anything we've seen in recent history. Nick also elucidates the latest numbers and projections around mortality rates and global impact.

First thing's first: Coronavirus! A request from listeners and a short PSA. Second: Are we at the beginning of a massive nationwide housing crisis in America that will force millions into homelessness? Conor Dougherty, an economics reporter at The New York Times, joins Nick to talk about his new book, “Golden Gates,” which tells stories of eviction, gentrification, an eroding middle class, a financial system that could be on the brink of driving families from their homes, and how to stop such a disastrous situation from happening.

Are Americans on the left and right simply destined to hate each other forever? Ezra Klein, cofounder of Vox and author of the new book, “Why We’re Polarized,” joins Nick to explain how we became a country so divided, if the current media landscape is causing more harm than social media does, and why Biden pulling ahead in the primary flipped everything upside down this week.

x`Over the past three years, Trump has become a pox on America, both at home and abroad, and changed politics forever. Daniel Pfeiffer, former Senior Advisor to President Obama, joins Nick to explain how we can "UnTrump America," how the Democrats have a slim, but possible, chance of winning in November, why beating Mitch McConnell might be more important than defeating Donald Trump, and how to roll back the disastrous judges that the Republicans have appointed over the past three years.