Inside the Hive

In this special episode of Inside the Hive, three guests—Vanity Fair editor in chief Radhika Jones, writer and podcaster Molly Jong-Fast, and standup comic Patton Oswalt—discuss the cultural and political legacy of Generation X. Asks Hive cohost Joe Hagan: How has the slacker generation, once known for irony and ambivalence, weathered the 21st Century?  The promise of ironic detachment may not have lasted, but Gen X-ers have become the last skeptics of the digital age. The generations that followed "introduced this 24/7 grind mentality,” says Oswalt, "where the people that wanted to live like little lives on the fringe, doing creative stuff, and making enough money to survive—those people are being pushed out…It's like if you're not grinding all the time, you should be wiped off the map. And that, to me, is really, really scary.”“We are skeptical of effort for effort's sake,” observes Jones. "So there's a way in which we're motivated by substance, and we're skeptical of anything that is not substantive.” Thirty years ago, Generation X celebrated what’s now being called “quiet quitting," but as some recent polling has shown, a large chunk of Americans born between 1965 and 1980 also leaned toward Donald Trump in recent elections—a perplexing data point. “We had this sort of belief that we were entitled to certain things,” surmises Jong-Fast. "And if you feel entitled to something, and mad and convinced that someone else has it, that can lead to Trumpism.”If nothing else, Gen X have always been superb at spitballing from the sidelines: “We are good critics,” says Jones. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Never has there been a time in U.S. history when lawyers were as in the foreground as they have been during the era of Donald Trump. Many of them have ended up under the bus, from Michael Cohen to Paul Manafort to Rudy Giuliani. But the many twists and investigatory turns over the last half decade also made household names of a number of bright legal minds. Andrew Weissman is chief among them. As a lead member of Robert Mueller’s special counsel’s office and a professor, Weissman knows how to meticulously break down the facts when it comes to all the president’s mess. On this week’s episode of Inside the Hive, he explains just how significant Trump’s national security breach was, without even knowing what’s in the documents secreted away at Mar-a-Lago. And what’s Attorney General Merrick Garland poised to do? Weissman has an idea.Plus, Hive media reporter Joe Pompeo on the birth of true-crime mania and his new book, “Blood & Ink.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, cohosts Emily Jane Fox and Joe Hagan talk to Tim O’Brien, executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion and author of "TrumpNation," about the latest obstacle in the Department of Justice’s investigation into Trump’s handling of top secret documents. The decision by Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, to appoint a “special master” to review the documents and slow the investigation, reeks of politics, says O’Brien. “Does this send a signal to other Trump appointees that you should carry the bag for your handler?” he asks. Despite Judge Cannon’s recent ruling, "the reality is this is a very robust and existentially threatening investigation to Donald Trump,” O'Brien adds, and Trump’s political power in the coming midterms is clearly on the wane. Can the law prevail over politics? Also in this episode: Hagan talks to Edward Buckles, Jr., director of the searing HBO documentary, “Katrina Babies.” A filmmaker from New Orleans who was 13 at the time of Hurricane Katrina, Buckles explores the tragic fallout on the lives of his friends and loved ones, most of whom never returned to their homes, part of an African-American diaspora largely ignored after the tragedy faded from the American consciousness. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Virtually every poll this summer had Democrat Pat Ryan losing his campaign for Congress to Republican challenger Marc Molinaro, including one released on the day of the election. This week, Ryan joins Inside the Hive’s Joe Hagan to talk about his shock victory in a rural New York district that’s now being viewed as a bellwether for Democratic hopes this fall. Ryan’s campaign (to replace Antonio Delgado, who left his seat to become New York’s lieutenant governor) began at about the same time as the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft Dobbs opinion in May. Ryan, a former Army officer and West Point graduate, leaned into the abortion issue and discovered a highly energized Democratic base. His campaign, he says, focused on “freedom and choice and the idea that I don’t want the government telling me or my fellow Americans what to do in their personal lives. That is clearly a resonant thing, and really a patriotic thing, and so I think that's one of the big takeaways here.”Along with the Dobbs decision, Ryan says, the January 6 hearings and the Mar-a-Lago raid have underlined the fragility of democracy in the face of GOP overreach, which has become a top issue among voters. “What we’re seeing happen nationally is a wake-up call that these are sort of deeper, more foundational rights,” Ryan says. “We’re not as divided as people might want to make us out to be.” “No one expects to agree on everything, that’s crazy,” Ryan observes. Voters “just want you to not bullshit them—no more bullshit. Be real, be a human being, be outraged that freedoms are literally being ripped away from people. And when you do that, it connects. That should not be surprising, but somehow in today’s politics the bar is so low that it somehow does connect and stand out.”Also this week: Cohost Emily Jane Fox talks to Hive correspondent Joe Pompeo about his juicy exclusive interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, amid her new role and the broader shifting landscape of cable news. 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, and nostalgia culture. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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. 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

Hive correspondents unpack Jared Kushner’s romantic and financial spin in his upcoming memoir and try making sense of Donald Trump burying his ex-wife, Ivanka’s mother, on a New Jersey golf course. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham joins Inside the Hive to talk about what she witnessed on January 6th, Melania’s “lazy” run as First Lady, and what people should know ahead of 2024. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week, Inside the Hive cohost Joe Hagan talks to Lis Smith, Democratic campaign veteran and author of the new memoir Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story, which details her journey, the public one and the private one, through Democratic campaigns over the past 17 years, for candidates as varied as Jon Corzine, Barack Obama, Pete Buttigieg, and, most infamously, former governor Andrew Cuomo, whose lurid political demise she details down to the last moments of his time in office. A savvy political operator, Smith trains her sights on stubborn problems like Florida governor Ron DeSantis, and what to do about President Joe Biden, who, despite his abysmal poll numbers, she says is preparing to come out swinging in advance of the midterms.  “If the [midterms] are a referendum on Democrats, we will be screwed in November,” says Smith, but if Biden and his surrogates can effectively target Trump-tainted election deniers and antiabortion Republicans, “that’s a terrain we can win on. And that’s a switch that we need to flip—we need to flip that switch pretty soon. And we have the opportunity to now.” Smith, who helped take Buttigieg’s star to the national level, is now working with Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow, who went viral with a searing counterattack on anti-LGBTQ+ Republicans. Smith puts McMorrow on a short list of candidates, along with Kansas City mayor Quinton Lucas, to form the future of the party.Listen to Joe's record: "Earl’s Closet: The Lost Archive of Earl McGrath, 1970-1980." Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices