Inside the Hive

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 Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road website, is any different from other CEOs in tech.

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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 over a planet of little green aliens.

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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 actually pulls off these outright deceptions, and why they are only going to get worse in 2020 as Trump does everything possible to try and maintain control of the White House.

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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.

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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 biggest egos in business, ever change to do the right thing?

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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 operations, and yes, politics. In part two of this week’s show, Nick talks about his latest feature in Vanity Fair, about Russian, Chinese and domestic spies working in Silicon Valley.

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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 more to speak out against these issues, and why we’re all so sick and tired of hearing about James Comey.

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Since the Cambridge Analyitca scandal broke just a few weeks ago, Facebook has seen its stock fall by $100 billion, and Mark Zuckerberg was forced to go before Congress. But what happens next to the 2.25-billion user social network? Will it be regulated? Or will it be broken up? Kevin Roose, NYT Tech columnist, joins us to explain what happened on the hill this week, and what will happen next in Silicon Valley.

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Will America finally vote a women into the White House in 2020? Will she be a Democrat or a Republican? Does it even matter? Could Stormy Daniels be the scandal that topples Trump? Jennifer Palmieri, former Director of Communications for the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign, and author of the new book, “Dear Madam President,” joins us this week to talk about all these topics, and what life in the Obama White House was like, how it felt to lose to Trump in the 2016 election (“surreal”), and the fear of knowing that Russia was trying to break our democracy, and change the outcome of the 2016 election. 

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Stormy's in, Hope is out. Bolton's hired as Shulkin is fired. How does FLOTUS feel POTUS? Emily Jane Fox joins us to explain what's going on inside the Trump's chaotic White House. Then, Nick Bilton and Jon Kelly talk about all the problems at Facebook, and if a company that just lost $100 billion in value because of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, can survive in the longterm.

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