Inside the Hive

This week, New York Times reporter Sheera Frenkel, coauthor of the blockbuster book “An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination,” describes her and coauthor Cecilia Kang's deep dive into the history and ambitions of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. How and why did Zuck allow his tech behemoth to become a hothouse of hate speech, misinformation and coordinated attacks on world governments? And what has he done about it? Frenkel explains to cohost Joe Hagan how Zuckerberg's pursuit of power has run roughshod over social responsibility, as he cashes in on Kumbaya connectivity instead. With Donald Trump suing Facebook for temporarily evicting him and Joe Biden accusing the platform of “killing people” by spreading vaccine misinformation, Zuckerberg keeps his eyes on the 5 billion customers that remain to be converted to the platform. An in-depth conversation. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Floods, wildfires, skies filled with smoke and ash—it’s been a summer full of alarming signs of climate change. This week, journalist and novelist Nathaniel Rich joins Joe Hagan on Inside the Hive to discuss the looming catastrophe we’ve known about for decades but have consistently failed to slow, let alone stop. Should we take the climate fight to politicians and corporations, or is our system too hopelessly broken to respond to the earth’s rising temperatures? How much do individual choices like eating vegan or driving electric cars really help? The author of Losing Earth: A Recent History talks about his personal response as he paints a portrait of ignorance and bad faith among the powers that be. Rich also suggests new ways to change and deepen our relationship to our planet in crisis—including the power of fiction. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, we welcome cohost Emily Jane Fox back to the podcast from paid family leave to discuss some personal breaking news: the arrival of infant daughter J.R. last week and the implications for work-life balance, family, marriage and podcasting. Plus, a review of the summer news cycle, what readers of Vanity Fair can expect in weeks to come, and a squeak or two from the new podcast cohost. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, veteran Hive correspondent Chris Smith talks to co-host Joe Hagan about the winner of the Democratic primary for New York mayor, Eric Adams, and his journey toward the most powerful office in the city. Smith has been covering city politics for more than two decades, through Bloomberg’s three terms and Bill DeBlasio’s seven tumultuous years, and understands better than most the risks and opportunities for a city trying to reinvent itself after the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests of last summer. Can a former policeman and savvy self-promoter like Adams lower crime, enact police reforms while also earning the trust of the NYPD and shepherd the city to prosperity? Chris Smith explains it all to you. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, Vanity Fair special correspondent Nick Bilton returns to Inside the Hive to help cohost Joe Hagan (finally) understand what cryptocurrencies are — how they came to be, how they work, and where they’re headed. From Bitcoin to Ethereum, from Elon Musk’s favored Dogecoin to the dreaded “shitcoin," Bilton, who has covered technology for over a decade, links cryptocurrencies to the evolution of an Internet culture driven by speculators, conspiracists and opportunists — and then answers the $33,000 question (the current price of Bitcoin): Should we actually invest in these things? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this week's episode of Inside the Hive, Emily Jane Fox talked to White House press secretary Jen Psaki about the administration's plans to pass paid leave and support working families, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian about paternity leave and the stigma around fathers taking time off (if they even get it, that is), and Rent the Runway C.E.O. Jenn Hyman about how offering fair and robust leave to employees makes economic and moral sense for employers. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this week's episode of Inside the Hive, Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox talk about 60 hours of Beatles footage, the fallibility of memories, and recording moments big and small in our own lives. Plus: what's happening in Washington and what's to come next week. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A year ago, when the pandemic was first raging, director Jon Chu faced a painful decision: He could send his new musical adaptation of Lin Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights” straight to streaming on HBO or wait for the theaters to reopen once the pandemic was over—a depressingly indeterminate time. Now it looks like that decision has paid off. Chu and his film editor Myron Kerstein return to Inside the Hive to talk about the experience of keeping their dream alive while the world twisted and turned. The movie — about a community of immigrants friends and families struggling to keep their “suenitos” alive in New York’s Washington Heights — arrives in a poetic new context that not even Hollywood could have dreamed up: “In the Heights,” screening in 5,300 theaters in the U.S., is the first real blockbuster film to test the power of cinemas after a year of closure. Chu and Kerstein discuss the long journey to the screen, the influences and ideas that went into making it, Chu's desire to mint a new cast of unknown Latino stars (like Anthony Ramos), the unlikely story of how the soon-to-be-iconic swimming pool sequence was conceived and created, and their hopes for a financial success that will make similar musicals possible. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this week’s episode, Vanity Fair’s senior media correspondent Joe Pompeo breaks down what’s happened to all the news networks post-Trump and what he thinks will happen to the hosts, ratings, and news-obsessed viewers now. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Co-hosts Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox talk vaccine incentives, the two kinds of infrastructure we need to be investing in, and the joys and pains of taking a first reporting trip in more than a year. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A year ago, when restauranteur Danny Meyer first stopped by Inside the Hive, the restaurant industry—and every industry, really—was in peril. He’d just laid off 2,000 employees, closed all of his restaurants, and had no idea how they could pivot or when things would get better. This week, he joins co-host Emily Jane Fox to discuss preparing to operate at 100 percent capacity as a vaccinated New York City roars back to life and how he thinks the business will change forever. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this very special episode of Inside the Hive, dear friend of the podcast Nick Bilton is back to interview author and reporter Brad Stone, whose new book on Jeff Bezos and his earth-shaking company—Amazon Unbound—is out this week from Simon & Schuster. In it, Stone traces the evolution of Amazon as a company, as well as the progression of Bezos himself from startup engineer to one of the most powerful men in the world. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this week’s episode of Inside the Hive, Emily Jane Fox sits down with the First Son to talk about his addiction, his dad, what makes a Biden love story, and why he thinks the GOP, and Don Jr. in particular, are obsessed with him. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

After the longest year in history—or four, to be honest—ABC News anchor and founder of meditation app 10 Percent Happier Dan Harris stops by this week’s episode of Inside the Hive to talk about meditation for skeptics, the toll a year of isolation takes on our mental health, and what we can all do to be just a little bit more at peace. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, Inside the Hive cohost Joe Hagan interviews Sheila Nezhad, the Minneapolis activist whose candidacy for mayor against incumbent Jacob Frey has been powered by the protest movement in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Nezhad gives an eyewitness account of the scene when former Officer Derek Chavin was convicted of murder and manslaughter this week, a verdict that left the city relieved but with unanswered questions about the future of law enforcement and racial justice. With the Justice Department investigating the practices of the Minneapolis Police Department, Nezhad sees an opening for a different kind of American city, one without a police department but with more social services and a larger safety net. Whether Nezhad's vision is unrealistic or inevitable is both the key to her political future and the knife’s edge of a national reckoning. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Her fame has endured. Her brand has expanded. The way the media has framed who she was and how she is talked about has changed. Paris Hilton sat down with Emily Jane Fox for an interview to talk about that shift, that sex tape, nostolgia culture, and life in quarantine on this week's episode of Inside the Hive. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, cohosts Emily Jane Fox and Joe Hagan pour through the pages of Beautiful Things, the eye-popping new Hunter Biden memoir, to highlight the best revelations and insights—not only into a President’s son, but into the Biden presidency itself and this peculiar (but hopeful) moment in American history. A tearful and candid tale of addiction and familial love, the book describes in excruciating detail the death of Hunter's brother Beau, the Biden family's private struggles in the aftermath, and Hunter’s lurid descent into alcoholism and crack addiction. He also attempts to set the record straight on the Burisma controversy that made him the political whipping boy for Donald Trump. An Inside the Hive book review.Bonus: Speaking of beautiful things, Emily Jane Fox has a life-altering revelation of her own for podcast listeners. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this week's episode of Inside the Hive, co-hosts Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox dissect the allegations against Congressman Matt Gaetz—namely that he bankrolled the travel of a 17-year-old with whom he was romantically involved—and his puzzling spin on them. Plus, Infrastructure Week is for real this time, and perhaps Twitter is a construct we could all do without. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 catalyzed Black Americans far and wide, and CNN’s Don Lemon, the only African-American cable news anchor in primetime, was no different. Lemon joins Inside the Hive to discuss his bestselling new book, This Is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism. In it, Lemon describes how the Trump years exposed America’s racial wounds, but also cleared the way for a new era of accountability. "People are being held accountable and they cannot just say something bigoted or racist or insensitive or inappropriate with impunity anymore,” Lemon observes. But he also believes in forgiveness. Addressing free speech and “cancel culture,” Lemon says, "I think you have to allow people grace in the conversation and in the act of trying to do the right thing.” Despite the divisions of the last four years, Lemon remains optimistic about the promise of pluralism, if for no other reason than demographics and the logic of capitalism. “We're all gonna have to learn to get together because that's what our country will be,” he says. “I think the way that we're going to do that is not by segregating ourselves, but by having relationships with people who don't look like us, because when you do that you get to experience other people's humanity, it is harder for you to treat them as other." Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox talk about returning to normal after this year, in terms of news coverage, daily routines, and the way we treat one another going forward. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 jazz piano at Juilliard and later developed what he’s come to call “social music,” a sound that draws on, in addition to New Orleans jazz, Duke Ellington, Stevie Wonder, Wu Tang Clan and even Bjork to find a common humanity in a time of division. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 Texas governor in 2022—remains to be seen. But O’Rourke finds optimism for the country in new leaders like Neguse, who he calls “an all-time American hero.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 blinding people,” he observes. “And I think folks are gonna wake up … and say, ‘The party of Trump is not the party that's going to be in the majority of the future.’” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 keep waiting?’” he says, calling Dr. King's dream of white and Black children joining hands a naive vision. "I have three children in this world,” Blow says. “The idea that they can still be fighting some form of the thing that I'm fighting today, when I am gone from this earth, is insane to me.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 with our eyes open." Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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

This week, Hive special correspondent Gabe Sherman, who has covered Donald Trump since 2015, joins cohost Joe Hagan for an in-depth discussion of the final days of the 2020 election and - possibly - the Trump era. Sherman and Hagan look past the polls to discern the narrative logic of Trump’s reality-TV presidency: As he runs out of storylines and ideas, the President of “scandal, chaos and conflict" has been bested by his biggest political competitor of the 2020 campaign: the coronavirus. Desperate to distract the public from the reality of mass death and joblessness, Trump has failed to live up to his own entertainment credo: “He’s become boring,” says Sherman. Carefully peeking past November 3rd, the two Hive reporters consider what comes next for Trump, for the media, and, more importantly, for an exhausted nation — is it possible to return to political normalcy, even under Joe Biden? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

With less than three weeks to go before the election, Crooked Media’s Jon Lovett joins co-host Emily Jane Fox to talk about the closing arguments each candidate is making—or not making, as it may be. Plus, he weighs in on the bigger questions of how Washington could normalize in a post-Trump world and what we should be doing in this final countdown. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

With President Donald Trump as contagion in chief and the election right around the corner, co-hosts Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox break down the administration's trust deficit, the debate over the next presidential debate, and the personal bellwethers they've seen over the last few weeks. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this week’s episode of Inside the Hive, co-host Emily Jane Fox sits down with former Obama White House advisor Valerie Jarrett to discuss what it’s like to work with Joe Biden, how debate prep usually works, what’s at stake in the coming weeks, and what a difference mentorship can make. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

With a Supreme Court nomination fight, a debate slugfest, and a battle for the soul of our nation on the horizon, co-hosts Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox talk about what’s at stake for the winners and losers and how to make it through alive. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, “Inside the Hive” welcomes historian Peter Fritzsche, author of "Hitler’s First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich,” to help separate fact from exaggeration on the increasingly pressing question of how much Trump’s GOP resembles the Nazis of the early 1930s. As Donald Trump attacks democratic norms and undermines the electoral process, and AG William Barr stokes fear of "a socialist path” if Trump loses, historians are hearing distressing echoes of Adolph Hitler’s rise, from the fear-mongering demonization of the left to the threat of street violence and military force against enemies real and imagined. One difference: “A white ethnic America is much more important in Trumps’ campaign than the vision of a Aryan-ized Germany was in Hitler’s electoral campaigns,” says Fritzsche, who says the MAGA conception of America "means there are villains who have undone America but now there are the virtuous who can remake America and 'make it great again.’ I call it ‘muscular melodramatic populism'”—the same phenomenon that brought Hitler to power. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this week’s Inside the Hive, Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox go deep into Bob Woodward's new bombshell of a book, which is all the more rattling because it is backed up by tapes of President Donald Trump himself detailing failure of leadership in the face of a global pandemic. Along with two other missives, from Michael Cohen and Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, the president and his family have been caught in a tattered web of their own words at a time when they needed to be weaving their own narratives if they want to have a chance in November. The question is whether or not book sales will translate into votes, and if any of this will hold until then. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this week’s “Inside the Hive,” Emily Jane Fox and Joe Hagan assess the state of the presidential race at the end of the long, hot 2020 summer and find themselves torn between glimmers of hope for Joe Biden in the polls and the ongoing apocalyptic tidings of Trumpism. In a feature interview, Hagan talks to longtime Republican strategist Stuart Stevens, whose best-selling book “It Was All a Lie” is a confession, a mea culpa and a searing analysis of the racism and xenophobia that has swallowed the GOP with the rise of Donald Trump, who he deems a “traitor” to his country. "I really think he is against America, what it means to be an American,” he says, blaming the Republican Party for "a complete collapse of responsibility that they had to defend democracy in America. And they failed." Stevens also offers advice on how to talk to your Trump-loving relatives about their vote in November. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this week’s “Inside the Hive,” Emily Jane Fox and Joe Hagan parse Trump's ghastly RNC, discussing what the Trump children’s speeches tell us about the family’s inner workings and the psyche of their narcissistic paterfamilias. As the GOP tries to turn the social unrest in Wisconsin into a suburban fear factor and tie it to Joe Biden, our hosts wonder whether this week’s convention—or the DNC, for that matter—will have any lasting impact. Plus: Joe Hagan talks to author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates about his role guest editing the September issue of Vanity Fair, which focuses on the Black Lives Matter movement and the fallout from the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Arriving in print and online during the Repulican National Convention, the issue aims directly at the heart of what’s at stake in this year’s election. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this week’s “Inside the Hive,” co-hosts Emily Jane Fox and Joe Hagan discuss the four-day extravaganza of Democratic hopes and dreams and the official coming out of Joe Biden as the nominee who will face off against Donald Trump for the future of the free world. From Joe and Jill Biden’s 70s sitcom-worthy biography to Barack Obama’s cold dismantling of Trump to Kamala Harris’s intersectional feminist vision, Fox and Hagan examine the spectacle and speeches (and the musical choices) for clues to the deeper storylines and the political battles ahead. With Republicans rolling out their own program next week, our co-hosts are poised somewhere between hope and nausea. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices