Inside the Hive by Vanity Fair

Host Brian Stelter examines the media circus surrounding Donald Trump's hush money trial with Olivia Nuzzi, Washington correspondent for New York magazine, and Vanity Fair staff writer Dan Adler. They discuss what it's like to cover the criminal trial today while it seemingly feels like 2016 and why it's essential for journalists in the courtroom to shout every detail and talk about every aspect. They also reflect on the personalities in the room amid the controlled environment and what's to come, as the trial hasn't even touched on the alleged crime yet.

On this week’s Inside the Hive with Brian Stelter, Vanity Fair writer Dan Adler and Hollywood Reporter special correspondent Lachlan Cartwright examine Donald Trump’s sordid relationship with David Pecker, the former National Enquirer executive at the center of the ex-president’s criminal hush money trial in Manhattan. Adler and Cartwight, both reporting from inside the courtroom, describe the “surreal” dynamics of this week's proceedings, and reveal how the back-scratching world of tabloid media ended up creating a monster. “You can’t believe this happened. You can’t believe it’s being litigated,” says Adler. “It all still is sort of like, a decade later, a little bit hard to process.”

Host Brian Stelter checks in with Vanity Fair’s Dan Adler, who describes the strange scene at Donald Trump’s hush money trial. Then Stelter speaks with “Columbine” author Dave Cullen about the 25th anniversary of the Colorado school shooting. Cullen discusses what changed, and what didn't, about American culture, police practices and gun laws. He also reflects on his personal connection with the families intricately linked through an unending American tragedy.

This is a preview episode of WIRED Politics Lab. Election deniers are mobilizing their supporters and rolling out new tech to disrupt the November election. These groups are already organizing on hyperlocal levels, and learning to monitor polling places, target election officials, and challenge voter rolls. And though their work was once fringe, its become mainstreamed in the Republican Party. Today, we focus on what these groups are doing, and what this means for voters and the election workers already facing threats and harassment. Listen to the full episode of WIRED Politics Lab here. Be sure to subscribe to the WIRED Politics Lab newsletter here.

Host Brian Stelter speaks with ESPN women's basketball reporter Alexa Philippou and Vanity Fair contributing editor Tom Kludt about a sport seemingly at an inflection point and surging in interest at both the college and pro levels. The group discusses stars who have helped drive enthusiasm for the game, including Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and coach Dawn Staley. They also reflect on challenges inside women's basketball and women's sports more broadly, particularly how record viewership still hasn't led to pay parity.

Host Brian Stelter speaks with journalist Scott Nover about how Donald Trump, in the midst of legal and financial turmoil, just got a huge lifeline by way of Truth Social. No, the social media network for the MAGA crowd isn’t suddenly a raging success. But through a “meme stock media merger,” as Nover recently described it for Vanity Fair, the presumptive GOP nominee netted billions this week—at least on paper. Questions remain, though, as to how and when Trump can actually take this money out of the market?

Host Brian Stelter examines the many criminal charges against Donald Trump with Bess Levin, a politics correspondent at Vanity Fair, and Vanity Fair staff writer Dan Adler. They discuss the details of the four indictments, including whether the tone of the Manhattan "hush money" case featuring the contents of a 2005 Access Hollywood tape will come across as an embarrassing, scandalous tabloid story for the former president or a technical, financial case. They also reflect on Trump's decades-long go-to legal strategy of invoking delay tactics and avoiding legal repercussions and what that could mean for the 2024 election and beyond.

How reliable are political polls in an era when almost no one answers the phone? Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer tells Brian Stelter that he takes polls "seriously," if not literally, and says Democrats dismiss the data at their own peril. "We are living on the knife's edge," Pfeiffer says, with Donald Trump showing the "slightest of leads right now" over Joe Biden. Pfeiffer explains why he'd rather be the Biden campaign than the Trump campaign and gives tips about how to digest media coverage of the presidential campaign.

Host Brian Stelter talks with Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz about the challenge of getting anything accomplished in Congress amid GOP dysfunction and Donald Trump’s demands, with a bipartisan border-security being the latest casualty. Schatz doesn’t mince words about Trump’s “fascist” tendencies, warns that democracy can be overthrown under a legalistic veneer, and chides the news media for failing to meet the moment.

This week’s Inside the Hive explores the recent IVF ruling in Alabama and the very personal fight for reproductive rights in America. Host Brian Stelter talks with Amanda Zurawski, who is suing the state of Texas after being denied an abortion, about nearly dying during her difficult family planning journey. He also speaks with Washington Post reporter Leigh Ann Caldwell about Republicans’ complicated relationship with IVF that has involved a lot of misunderstanding of both the science and the political consequences of the ruling.

On this week’s episode of Inside the Hive, host Brian Stelter talks to Kara Swisher, the crusading tech journalist, ahead of her forthcoming release, Burn Book, a no-holes-barred accounting of the tech titans who are wresting more and more control over the American economy—and attention span. They discuss the absurd antics of Elon Musk, the follies of Mark Zuckerberg’s privacy policies, and why the industry is in dire need of more capital “A” adults. “They don't feel like they have any responsibility for the things they say and the impact it has in the real world,” she tells Stelter. “And that’s always been a pressing issue for me as 2016 dawned, when you could see the implications of it.

Host Brian Stelter explores how Joe Biden’s campaign is embracing TikTok with Makena Kelly, a senior writer at Wired, and Harry Sisson, an NYU junior and TikTok political commentator. They discuss how politicians can effectively harness the platform and how the 81-year-old president's team is hoping Dark Brandon can help sway Gen Z voters.

Host Brian Stelter chats with special Vanity Fair correspondent Nick Bilton about the Apple Vision Pro, which hit shelves last week, as well as his sit-down with CEO Tim Cook at the company headquarters. They discuss how the long-awaited product is the future of spatial computing, why Cook isn't betting so big on AI, and whether augmented reality can really enhance the human experience in the years to come.

Host Brian Stelter talks with Will Van Sant, a staff writer for The Trace, a nonpartisan newsroom covering guns, about whether the National Rifle Association can recover after the NRA corruption trial and the resignation of CEO Wayne LaPierre over lavish spending. They discuss the damning evidence against LaPierre, who he is as a calculating grifter and stoker of culture wars, and if the NRA and LaPierre's downfall ultimately even matters at this point when it comes to gun control measures.

The wives and daughters of Dubai’s ruler live in unbelievable luxury. So why do the women in Sheikh Mohammed’s family keep trying to run away? The New Yorker staff writer Heidi Blake joins In the Dark’s Madeleine Baran to tell the story of the royal women who risked everything to flee the brutality of one of the world’s most powerful men. In four episodes, drawing on thousands of pages of secret correspondence and never-before-heard audio recordings, “The Runaway Princesses” takes listeners behind palace walls, revealing a story of astonishing courage and cruelty. “The Runaway Princesses” is a four-part narrative series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. To keep listening, follow In the Dark wherever you get your podcasts or via this link https://link.chtbl.com/itd_f

Host Brian Stelter talks with NPR’s Andrea Bernstein, who has been in the courtroom for E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case against Donald Trump, along with Vanity Fair special correspondent Molly Jong-Fast. They discuss Trump using the backdrop of these legal proceedings to portray the system as rigged against him—a running grievance on the campaign trail—and how is public outbursts and continued attacks on Carroll could be a preview for the criminal trials to come.

Host Brian Stelter checks in with veteran political reporter and CNN anchor Kasie Hunt fresh off her reporting trip to Iowa, where Donald Trump trounced Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, and on to New Hampshire, the next stop in a GOP race that already feels all but settled. They consider whether Nikki Haley can blunt the frontrunner’s momentum, how Trump’s celebrity status is his superpower with the Republican base, and what this unusual primary cycle portends for a likely Trump-Biden rematch in November.

Inside the Hive host Brian Stelter explores the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party with Joshua Green, Bloomberg national correspondent and author of The Rebels. Green, who in his last book charted the right-wing populism of the Trump era, is now studying to the other side of the aisle, where popular figures like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez helped lead an economic "backlash" to the 2008 financial crisis that pulled the party leftward.

Henry Kissinger, who died this year, at the age of a hundred, served in the Nixon and Ford Administrations as national-security adviser and Secretary of State; for a period, he was both at the same time. Kissinger fled Nazi Germany as a teen-ager, and went on to advise a dozen U.S. Presidents, from John F. Kennedy to Joe Biden. He opened up relations between the U.S. and China with Richard Nixon, pursued détente with the Soviet Union, and made decisions that led to death and destruction across Southeast Asia and beyond. Earlier this year, he travelled to Beijing to meet President Xi Jinping in an attempt to massage U.S.-China relations. “There are not that many hundred-year-olds who insist upon their own relevance and actually are relevant,” the New Yorker staff writer Susan B. Glasser says. Glasser calls Kissinger “the paradigmatic Washington figure,” and says that despite Kissinger’s history of destructive foreign-policy decisions, the American national-security establishment had a “collective addiction” to his thinking. How did Kissinger shape U.S. foreign policy, and what enabled him to remain a central political player in Washington long after he left office? The New Yorker staff writers Jane Mayer and Evan Osnos join Glasser to weigh in on The Political Scene.

Host Brian Stelter breaks down Elon Musk’s erratic stewardship of Twitter, now X, with Zoë Schiffer, managing editor of Platformer and author of the forthcoming book, “Extremely Hardcore.” They discuss Musk’s rightward shift and war against the “woke mind virus,” the ramifications of him blowing up Twitter’s verification system, and whether it’s responsible to still post on X as misinformation and toxicity flow.