Inside the Hive

Latest Episodes:

All Politics Are Local Oct 22, 2021

Show notes

On this week's episode of Inside the Hive, co-hosts Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox talk how climate change, shipping delays and local school boards could impact midterm elections. Plus: what they're watching and reading to get through the darkness.

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As Texas Goes, So Goes the Nation: Lone Star Candidate Matthew Dowd on How Democrats Can Win in 2022 The veteran political adviser and analyst talks about now running for office himself on Inside the Hive. Oct 15, 2021

Show notes

Matthew Dowd, former Bush campaign adviser turned analyst, has spent his career behind the scenes. But now he’s running as a Democrat for lieutenant governor of Texas in 2022—with eyes locked on hard-right incumbent Dan Patrick, the man responsible for pushing through the infamous voter-suppression and antiabortion bills that have galvanized Republicans and alarmed Democrats. On this week’s Inside the Hive, Dowd analyzes the state of the Democratic Party and makes the case that if Texas can be turned blue (finally), the spread of Trumpism can be stopped nationally too. And even if the Biden administration can’t pull out of its current slump, he argues, Democrats can still beat Republicans at the state level. Dowd weighs in on Biden, congressional Democrats, Beto O’Rourke—and his favorite Matthew McConaughey film.

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Back to Reality: Whistleblowers, Trump Derangement, and Democrat’s Big Problem Oct 08, 2021

Show notes

On this week’s episode of Inside the Hive, co-hosts Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox talk about what COVID attitudes feel like in different cities, what the Facebook whistleblower revealed about social media algorithms, and debate whether or not we should ever talk about Trump again.

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“The Only Winning Move Is Not to Play”: Vanity Fair's Tech Correspondent on How to Beat Social Media Oct 01, 2021

Show notes

This week, Vanity Fair tech correspondent Nick Bilton speaks with cohost Joe Hagan about the recent leaks from Facebook that reveal the company knew of the toxic impact of their platforms, including Instagram, on users, especially teenage girls. In a world in which the social media giants—FAANG, or Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google—are too rich and powerful to be contained by limp political and regulatory systems, “we’re left to the wolves,” says Bilton. After covering the social media world for a decade, Bilton says the only way to beat the media giants is to hack the system—ourselves—by reprogramming our behaviors, which are the literal coins of the social media realm.

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“Texans Are Being Held Hostage”: Julián Castro on “WTF Is Happening” in the Lone Star State Sep 24, 2021

Show notes

This week, Julián Castro, onetime Democratic presidential candidate and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Barack Obama, joins Inside the Hive to discuss the hard-right push on guns, abortion, and voting in Texas, which has become a blueprint for recalcitrant Trumpist states, and what Democrats are going to do about it. Castro is worried about what he calls Biden’s relatively weak leadership—especially his handling of the border crisis. “My hope is that the Biden administration is going to reverse course on this very soon,” he says. He also sketches out a scenario in which his former competitor, Beto O’Rourke, runs for governor of Texas in 2022 and helps Democrats retake power after years of dashed hopes: “I believe that he has a shot to beat Greg Abbott.”

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Family Matters: Gillian Laub Explores the Political Divide Sep 17, 2021

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On this week’s episode of Inside the Hive, photographer and author Gillian Laub talks about her beautiful new book, in which she documents her family’s love and their divide over President Trump.

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"I thought you said you’d never forget”: A conversation on 9/11 with author Elliot Ackerman Sep 10, 2021

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This week, co-host Joe Hagan talks to novelist Elliot Ackerman, a veteran of both the Afghan and Iraq wars, on the meaning of 9/11 and the long-term impact on American life, politics and culture. A critic of the Biden administration’s exit from Afghanistan, Ackerman has struggled with feelings of bitterness over the wars that defined his life and redefined the nation. As media and politics have become more extreme and polarized in the 20 years since 9/11, the country has become more cynical and demoralized, less able to unify in a crisis. An optimist in a pessimistic time, Ackerman looks for signs of hope in America's founding ideals--enlightenment, reason--even if the country never quite lives up to them.

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“Like A Mad Max Movie Plot”: Confronting The Texas Abortion Ban Sep 03, 2021

Show notes

In the wake of the shocking Supreme Court move that has allowed Texas to effectively ban abortion, cohost Joe Hagan conducts back to back interviews with Amy Hagstrom Miller, of Whole Women’s Health, which operates abortion clinics in Texas, and Wendy Davis, a veteran of Texas politics and founder of Deeds Not Words, a nonprofit committed to gender equality. Addressing the law and its ramifications for women (and especially women of color), Miller and Davis bring front line news and historical context to this demoralizing moment in the years-long battle for women’s reproductive rights. They also consider the political fallout and offer ideas for a path forward in what is sure to be a long and rocky road ahead.

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Anti-Vaxxers, Afghanistan, and the Late-Summer Bad News Cycle Aug 27, 2021

Show notes

Inside the Hive cohosts Emily Jane Fox and Joe Hagan analyze the latest bad news from Afghanistan and the pandemic resurgence sweeping the country, especially Florida. Twenty years after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in search of Al Qaeda, was a bloody and chaotic exit the only possibility? When Donald Trump can’t convince his own followers to get vaccinated (he was booed for suggesting as much), has the weaponized ignorance he helped foment finally gone rogue? How will these world-historical events be woven into our politics? Plus: a touch of good news with a bonus clip from a newly unearthed live recording of John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.”

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“Damn, what do we do now?”: A conversation with Afghan TV chief Saad Mohseni Aug 20, 2021

Show notes

This week, cohost Joe Hagan talks to Saad Mohseni, chief executive of the MOBY Group, which has been broadcasting television news and entertainment programming in Afghanistan since 2004. As the Taliban take over the country following the US’s chaotic exit last week, the fate of Mohseni’s media outlet in Kabul, staffed with 450 Afghans, hangs in the balance. Will the Taliban shut down or take over the TV network? Even as Mohseni looks for signs of hope in a young population weened on TV and Internet access (including the Taliban themselves), he remains wary of the Taliban's extremism, misogyny and censorship and expresses anger at the Biden administration’s handling of the pullout, which has left his beloved country to a grim fate after decades of cynical US foreign policy.

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