Inside the Hive

As America tears itself apart over social issues, like Roe vs Wade and whether to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, technology could soon make things even worse in this country. Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box, joins Nick to discuss potential massive job loss, gross inequality and A.I. being used against America with the power of digital nuclear bombs. As Levie and Nick discuss,...

It's been decades since there has been a Supreme Court hearing like Brett Kavanaugh's, and yet, the outcome could end up being exactly the same as Anita Hill's testimony. Vanity Fair's Emily Jane Fox joins Nick to discuss why Kavanaugh will likely still be a Supreme Court Justice, and why Christine Blasey Ford's testimony was so important to the #MeToo movement. After the show, Nick and Jon Kelly...

As Americans await the news of whether Dr. Christine Blasey Ford will appear before the Judiciary Committee, the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh could go down in flames, bringing Republicans and evangelicals along for the ride. Tina Nguyen, who covers the right wing for The Hive, joins Nick to explain how the G.O.P. and alt-right media is dealing the accusations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted F...

A decade ago this week, America officially entered the worst financial collapse since The Great Depression. Now, as Donald Trump rolls back regulations meant to protect consumers, some fear that we are about to see another housing collapse? Spencer Rascoff, the CEO of Zillow, joins Nick to discuss this and everything housing-related, from the future of the industry to how most poor and middle clas...

Who was it? Who wrote the New York Times OpEd from deep inside the White House? Nick and Jon discuss this, who will be fired next as a result, Bob Woodward’s new bombshell book, “Fear,” and if Congress is finally going to regulate social media after the hearings this week. Also on the show, Nancy Jo Sales, director of, “Swiped: Hooking Up in the Digital Age,” a new documentary for HBO, explains ho...

Will Donny Jr. be indicted for lying to Congress? Does Michael Cohen sleep with one eye open? Will Paul Manafort spend the rest of his life in jail, or be pardoned by his old buddy, POTUS? Will Trump's downfall come from his infidelities? And speaking of, how does Melania feel about all of this?  Emily Jane Fox, a senior reporter for Vanity Fair, and author of the book Born Trump, joins Nick to ex...

Could a Trump impeachment destroy the economy, or save it? Is Trump's trade war with China going to usher in a new recession? Will Trump's deregulation end up screwing over consumers, who could lose their jobs, homes, and retirement? Mary Childs, a senior reporter for Barron's magazine, joins Nick to answer all the questions about the economy that keep us up at night. Childs also discusses how Elo...

It’s been a few weeks since Donald Trump signed an executive order reversing his diabolical decision to separate children and parents at the border, but the story is far from over. Jacob Soboroff, correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC, who helped break the child separation story open, joins Nick to explain what will happen to the hundred of children who have still not been reunited with their paren...

Do this week’s voter numbers in Ohio, and elsewhere, foreshadow a blue wave? Is Donald Trump actually the Republican party’s most powerful weapon, or its Achilles’ heel? Could Trump finally be impeached? Jefrey Pollock, a Democratic pollster and political consultant, joins Nick to answer all those questions, and how it could all go drastically wrong. Stay tuned after the show for Nick and Jon Kell...

The rise of celebrity culture, and now influencer culture, has it's good sides, and it's bad. But does one outweigh the other? Nick Adler, who manages investments and social media for The King of Rap, Snoop Dogg, joins Nick (Bilton) to offer his insight about the rise of the celebrity culture and what it means for the world, from Kim Kardashian to Logan Paul, all the way up to that guy currently i...

Its been the craziest week in recent Silicon Valley memory--Facebook's stock fell of a cliff; Elon Musk went after one of his critics; and Robert Mueller started looking into Trump's Twitter feed. Nick explains what all of this means in the here and now, and answers a very serious question down the line: what would it take for Zuck to move on from Facebook? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

Technology has a history of starting out with good intentions, and eventually being leveraged for quite the opposite. On this week’s episode, Adam Fisher, author of Valley of Genius, joins Nick to explain how Silicon Valley--an industry created to advance war research and governmental capacities--was co-opted for commercial, and often sinister, purposes, from election-meddling operatives to racist...

On the face of it, it seems like America is currently more divided than anytime since the Civil War. But back in 1968, America was embroiled in chaos, torn over the war in Vietnam, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and later, the murder of Robert Kennedy, the brother of JFK. Marc Smerling and Zac Stuart-Pontier, the team behind Crimetown and The Jinx, join Nick to explain how the murder...

Are Tom Arnold and Michael Cohen, as one recent tweet could have been construed to suggest, teaming up to take down Donald Trump? The famous comedian and Trumpworld scold joins Nick to explain how he plans to take down the president, what it was like being married to Rosanne, and how he recently tried to fight Cohen outside the Regency hotel.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices...

A few years ago, a chance encounter between Christopher Steele, of the now-famous Steele Dossier, and an FBI agent who was working on a gambling case at Trump Tower, opened the door to a multi-year investigation into the massive corruption taking place at FIFA, the soccer federation. Ken Bensinger, author of the new book, “Red Card: How the U.S. Blew the Whistle on the World's Biggest Sports Scand...

While Americans watched in horror as innocent children, as young as 9-months-old, were torn from their parents arms, Ivanka Trump was posting photos of her and her children, as happy as could be. Is she oblivious? A mean girl? Or is she unable to speak publicly about how she really feels out of fear of her father? Emily Jane Fox, author of the new book, Born Trump: Inside America’s First Family, j...

Robby Mook, former campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, joins Nick this week to discuss how Russian is planning to drive more discourse in our democracy, and the 2018 election. Mook also discusses how the Republican party is simply a rubber stamp for Trump, afraid of what he might do or say to them; and who the Democratics will elect in 2020. Finally, Mook talks about the best and worst times dur...

Silicon Valley is notoriously full of founders who exaggerate, intentionally lie to the media, and dupe investors, and even Congress. But there are few stories that rival the fraud behind Theranos, the blood-testing company once worth $10 billion, and now worth nothing. John Carreyrou, author of a new book, "Bad Blood," joins us to explain how the company's CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, defrauded everyon...

Should it be legal to sell mild drugs, like weed and magic mushrooms, on the Internet? What about heroin? Handguns? AR-15s? Even murder-for-hire? Nick Bilton sits down with Tom Conrad, former product director of Snap and co-founder of Pandora, to discuss Nick's book, “American Kingpin;” if Silicon Valley CEOs are moral at heart, or more concerned with their profits and their legacy; and if Ross Ul...

Why are we here? Is there a God? A reason to it all? How, and why, did the universe begin, and how, and why, will it end? Sean M. Carroll, a cosmologist and physicist specializing in dark energy and general relativity, joins Nick to answer the questions that plague us all, including, if there's a chance that somewhere out there in the cosmos, there is another extraterrestrial Donald Trump ruling o...

Donald Trump has always been a blatant liar, making up stories about his worth to how many people were at his inauguration, but do people actually like it when Trump lies to them? Amanda Carpenter, author of a new book, "Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies To Us," joins Nick to talk about why Republicans, and evangelicals, still love Trump, even after all these lies, how Trump actu...

Comedian and commentator, formally of The Onion and The Daily Show, Baratunde Thurston, joins this week to talk about whether Kanye West poses a bigger threat to civilization than Trump, how white men in Silicon Valley could destroy the future for everyone, especially African Americans, and why the future probably isn't as bad as Nick thinks it is. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastch...

As of late, tech giants like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Google, are being perceived as evil for taking advantage of our deepest, darkest secrets and fears with one goal: to make us click on more invasive ads. Tristan Harris, who has been described as "the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience," is trying to change that. But can an industry worth trillions of dollars, with some of the...

The only reason that magic tricks actually work, according to the world famous magician and puzzle-maker David Kwong, is that “people want to believe.” The same theory applies to politics, fake news, and the entire tricks that Trump used to win the White House. Kwong joins us this week to share fascinating stories about magicians playing an integral role in war efforts, clandestine government oper...

Is Trump making it more difficult to be African American in the U.S.? Does Ben Carson secretly dislike people of color? Is Donald Trump a true racist? Jamil Smith, a writer for The New Republic, Time, and now, Rolling Stone, joins us to explain why, 155 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, black men are arrested for just sitting in Starbucks coffee shop, why President Obama could have done m...