Russia expert Nina Khrushcheva and Trump impeachment hero Alexander Vindman explain what is driving Putin's assault on Ukraine — and how Republicans also have blood on their hands. Cohosts Emily Jane Fox and Joe Hagan interview two leading experts about Russia's invasion of Ukraine — how it happened and how it could reshape the world as we know it. First, Nina Krushcheva, a Russia expert and professor at the New School in New York, takes us inside the mind of Vladimir Putin, how he was underestimated and whether the cold, calculated ex-KGB man has finally succumbed to a world-historic megalomania. Next, Hagan talks to Alexander Vindman, the former Army Lt. Colonel and outspoken participant in Trump's first impeachment trial that revolved around the then president's attempts to dig up dirt on Joe Biden in Ukraine. Vindman reserves his harshest criticism for Putin sympathizers in the GOP: “These folks have blood on their hands. They're going to own this.”

This week, cohost Joe Hagan talks to renowned writer, culture critic, and scholar Lucy Sante, whose essay in the February issue of Vanity Fair describes her transition at age 67. Sante expands on her many stages of personal revelation—how the “egg” was cracked—and the relief and liberation she experienced in embracing her long-denied gender as well as the challenges she still faces, personally, socially, and romantically. While she works on a new book about her self discovery, the author of nonfiction classics like Low Life and Factory of Facts is navigating the misunderstood nexus of gender and sexuality with her signature erudition, wit and curiosity.

This week, Inside the Hive cohosts Emily Jane Fox and Joe Hagan examine potential cracks in the American ice. On one side of the aisle, Republicans Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell appear to have distanced themselves from the Jan. 6 insurrection. On the other, Democrats have begun backing away from COVID restrictions. Are these maneuvers for political advantage in advance of the 2022 midterms, or signs of something more? Plus: Fox and Hagan weigh in on this year's Oscar nominations.

This week, cohost Joe Hagan talks to Hive media correspondent Joe Pompeo, who helps unwind the Succession-worthy melodrama around the departure of CNN president Jeff Zucker in the wake of the ouster of anchor Chris Cuomo, which itself came in the wake of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s resignation following accusations of sexual harassment. How does one ouster connect to the other? And was the reason Zucker gave for his exit — failing to disclose a romantic relationship with a top CNN executive — the true reason he left or is there something more at work? Pompeo explores the possibilities and reveals new details. All this and the drama surrounding Joe Rogan too on the latest episode of Inside the Hive.

The week’s episode of Inside the Hive gets to the heart of this puzzling economic moment—with inflation on the rise and the supply chain a mess but the rest of the fundamentals stronger than they have been in years. Economist Beth Ann Bovino breaks it down and looks ahead to what comes next.

On this week’s Inside the Hive, cohost Joe Hagan and Paul Begala, CNN analyst and former counselor to Bill Clinton, discuss the woeful state of the Biden White House and the fate of the Democrats, including the latest defeat over the Voting Rights Act and the filibuster. With Biden trying to be both a “normal” President and an FDR change agent for the ages, he’s managed to do neither and please no one as his polls sink. Begala offers his analysis and advice for rebuilding Democratic prospects in the midterms and countering a Republican Party hellbent on destroying democracy.

The CDC's messaging around Omicron has been a disaster, and with cases surging and despair on the rise, Dr. Katelyn Jetelina stops by this episode of Inside the Hive to give a clear picture of what we should know about the virus right now. The epidemiologist, professor and author of the popular "Your Local Epidemiologist" newsletter answers all of our questions about when the variant might peak, what comes next, what we should know about schools, and where to find some silver linings.

On this week's episode of Inside the Hive, co-hosts Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox are joined by their colleague Abigail Tracy to talk about what's next for the January 6 commission, what is at stake in an election year, and whether it will practically mean anything to half of the country.

This week, Inside the Hive cohosts Emily Jane Fox and Joe Hagan discuss strategies for surviving holiday isolation and anxiety during the COVID resurgence. In that spirit, Hagan talks to Don Was, famed record producer and president of Blue Note Records, about the transporting power of music, taking listeners through his own personal playlist of favorite recordings and the stories behind them, from Norah Jones and Iggy Pop to the Wayne Shorter and Charles Lloyd. A holiday special for the news weary. (Find an exclusive playlist on Spotify under "Inside the Hive Holiday Special.")

This week, Katie Couric, legendary onetime cohost of NBC’s Today show, talks to Inside the Hive's Joe Hagan about her frank and searing new memoir, Going There, which pulls back the curtain on her starry and sometimes starcrossed life and career. Couric recounts the sexist culture of network TV but also examines her own place in a culture that allowed alleged abusers like Matt Lauer, Jeff Fager and Les Moonves (Couric allies all) to thrive. There’s plenty of blame to go around - including Couric's charge, in her book, that Hagan’s 2007 cover story on Couric in New York magazine was a “hit job.” Hagan and Couric visit the spirits of media Past, Present and Yet to Come.

This week, Inside the Hive cohosts Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox explore the crossroads of art and politics, discussing Hagan’s recent Vanity Fair profile of Hollywood director and democratic socialist Adam McKay, and Fox’s new profile of Hunter Biden, the son of the President of the United States who has taken up painting and developed a lucrative career in the shadow of ethical questions and his own lurid personal history. One wants to change the world with movies; the other wishes the world would just leave him alone. An exclusive peek behind the stories.

This week, Inside the Hive cohost Joe Hagan invites resident Beatles fanatics Miriam Elder and Mike Hogan, Hive executive editor and VF.com digital director, respectively, to analyze, review, and otherwise obsess on Peter Jackson’s sprawling 7.8-hour Beatles docuseries Get Back, available on Disney+. From the George Harrison psychodrama to the John-Paul balancing act to the “fifth Beatle” to Ringo’s drumming to what’s up with Yoko, this is the conversation you need whether you’ve seen one, three, or none of the episodes.

Inside the Hive cohosts Emily Jane Fox and Joe Hagan hash out the big Thanksgiving dinner-table talking points, from the confounding economy to Joe Biden’s political fortunes to what movies and TV shows everybody needs to watch. A survival guide and an offer of gratitude.

As the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell starts up this week, Inside the Hive cohost Joe Hagan talks to Vanity Fair correspondents Vanessa Grigoriadis and Gabriel Sherman about their reporting on the Jeffrey Epstein scandal—what we know, what we don’t know, and what the whole sordid affair tells us about power and sexism in America. Grigoriadis’s latest podcast series, Fallen Angel: The Victoria’s Secret Story, details the fascinating history of the lingerie chain and the cultural damage it did to a generation of women, including its own models. Sherman, a featured voice, explains how Ohio-based owner Les Wexner came under Epstein’s spell and helped finance his predatory designs on women and girls. The ironies are rich: “This man who was so connected to Jeffrey Epstein is also the man who was making that lingerie that young girls were coveting,” observes Grigioriadis.

On this week's episode of Inside the Hive, Pod Save America host Jon Favreau stops by to talk about his new podcast series, Offline, about the ways in which the internet is changing and possibly breaking everything.

This week, cohost Joe Hagan reviews the news with Miriam Elder, executive editor of the Hive, examining Tuesday's election results and what they portend for Democrats and President Joe Biden. Are voters really afraid of critical race theory, or was Virginia's Terry McAuliffe just a terrible candidate? Also: What’s a metaverse, and will it save us from ourselves or become just another hothouse for the culture wars?

On this week's episode of Inside the Hive, Hill House House founder and C.E.O. Nell Diamond talks with Emily Jane Fox about creating an "it" item on Instagram, building a community around a commodity, and how to get direct to consumer right.

On this week's episode of Inside the Hive, co-hosts Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox talk how climate change, shipping delays and local school boards could impact midterm elections. Plus: what they're watching and reading to get through the darkness.

Matthew Dowd, former Bush campaign adviser turned analyst, has spent his career behind the scenes. But now he’s running as a Democrat for lieutenant governor of Texas in 2022—with eyes locked on hard-right incumbent Dan Patrick, the man responsible for pushing through the infamous voter-suppression and antiabortion bills that have galvanized Republicans and alarmed Democrats. On this week’s Inside the Hive, Dowd analyzes the state of the Democratic Party and makes the case that if Texas can be turned blue (finally), the spread of Trumpism can be stopped nationally too. And even if the Biden administration can’t pull out of its current slump, he argues, Democrats can still beat Republicans at the state level. Dowd weighs in on Biden, congressional Democrats, Beto O’Rourke—and his favorite Matthew McConaughey film.

On this week’s episode of Inside the Hive, co-hosts Joe Hagan and Emily Jane Fox talk about what COVID attitudes feel like in different cities, what the Facebook whistleblower revealed about social media algorithms, and debate whether or not we should ever talk about Trump again.

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.

This week, Julián Castro, onetime Democratic presidential candidate and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Barack Obama, joins Inside the Hive to discuss the hard-right push on guns, abortion, and voting in Texas, which has become a blueprint for recalcitrant Trumpist states, and what Democrats are going to do about it. Castro is worried about what he calls Biden’s relatively weak leadership—especially his handling of the border crisis. “My hope is that the Biden administration is going to reverse course on this very soon,” he says. He also sketches out a scenario in which his former competitor, Beto O’Rourke, runs for governor of Texas in 2022 and helps Democrats retake power after years of dashed hopes: “I believe that he has a shot to beat Greg Abbott.”

On this week’s episode of Inside the Hive, photographer and author Gillian Laub talks about her beautiful new book, in which she documents her family’s love and their divide over President Trump.

This week, co-host Joe Hagan talks to novelist Elliot Ackerman, a veteran of both the Afghan and Iraq wars, on the meaning of 9/11 and the long-term impact on American life, politics and culture. A critic of the Biden administration’s exit from Afghanistan, Ackerman has struggled with feelings of bitterness over the wars that defined his life and redefined the nation. As media and politics have become more extreme and polarized in the 20 years since 9/11, the country has become more cynical and demoralized, less able to unify in a crisis. An optimist in a pessimistic time, Ackerman looks for signs of hope in America's founding ideals--enlightenment, reason--even if the country never quite lives up to them.

In the wake of the shocking Supreme Court move that has allowed Texas to effectively ban abortion, cohost Joe Hagan conducts back to back interviews with Amy Hagstrom Miller, of Whole Women’s Health, which operates abortion clinics in Texas, and Wendy Davis, a veteran of Texas politics and founder of Deeds Not Words, a nonprofit committed to gender equality. Addressing the law and its ramifications for women (and especially women of color), Miller and Davis bring front line news and historical context to this demoralizing moment in the years-long battle for women’s reproductive rights. They also consider the political fallout and offer ideas for a path forward in what is sure to be a long and rocky road ahead.