Inside the Hive

Latest Episodes:

"I've Got to Do Something. I've Got to Say Something”: A Conversation with CNN’s Don Lemon Mar 26, 2021

Show notes

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."

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What Does Life Post-Vaccine Look Like? Mar 19, 2021

Show notes

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.

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COVID A Year In: Where We Are and Where We're Headed Mar 12, 2021

Show notes

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.

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“It Was a Test of My Mettle. Am I Really About What I Say I'm About?”: A Conversation with Late Show Band Leader Jon Batiste Mar 05, 2021

Show notes

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.

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A Return of Normalcy Feb 26, 2021

Show notes

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.

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The “Absolute and Abject Failure” of the GOP: Democratic Stars Joe Neguse and Beto O’Rourke on Trump, Cruz, and Finding Hope Feb 19, 2021

Show notes

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.”

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Life On the Disinformation SuperHighway Feb 12, 2021

Show notes

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.

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Can Trump’s Grip on the GOP Be Loosened?: Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger Says Yes Feb 05, 2021

Show notes

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.’”

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"Fake Famous": The Dark Side of Influencer Culture Jan 29, 2021

Show notes

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.

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“I Don’t Tense Up in Atlanta When I See the Police": An Interview with Author Charles Blow Jan 22, 2021

Show notes

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.”

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