In Bed With The Right

Episode 130 -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 05:57:02 GMT

For this episode, Moira walks Adrian through the life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815 - 1902). Famous as a pioneering feminist intellectual and crusader for women's suffrage, Stanton is today also remembered for the racism and anti-immigrant sentiment that dominated the second half of her incredibly long career. We explore how these two go together, and what Stanton's life tells us about the effects of political disappointment.

Find Ellen Carol Dubois's new Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Revolutionary Life here.

Read (or "reëncounter") Moira's review essay in the New Yorker here.

Episode 129 -- Looksmaxxing

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 06:26:59 GMT

In this episode, Moira walks Adrian through the strange, disturbing world of looksmaxxing. We try to spend less time asking where this phenomenon comes from, less time gawking at the weird terminology and rituals of this subculture (though we do spend some time, we're only human!)--but our main question is what a phenomenon like looksmaxxing says about masculinity, right-wing gender politics, and heterosexuality.

From behind the Paywall: Episode 105 -- Richard Wagner's Parsifal

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 07:37:27 GMT

This week, Adrian and Moira are both traveling -- Adrian is finishing work on the newly titled Project 1933: Fascism Then and Now (available for preorder now). So, back by popular (?) demand (?), it's another Richard Wagner-focused episode of In Bed with the Right. Wagner's final opera, 1882's Parsifal, draws on the grail legends, various philosophers, Wagner's own aging process, and whatever the 19th century version of Buddhism for Dummies was. Come for the male suffering, stay for the syphilis-metaphors, the Best Little Whorehouse in Grailland, and the final split in the bromance known as Nietzgner (probably? We're talking about Nietzsche and Wagner).

Episode 128 -- Queer Women in Nazi Germany

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 06:48:45 GMT

Expanding on our Project 1933 series, for this episode we talked to historian Sam Huneke about the fate of queer women in Nazi Germany, 1933 and onward. This is a surprisingly contested history, because there was, for a long time, an assumption that women were not really persecuted for being queer in Nazi Germany. While the treatment of female homosexuality (and transgender people) in the Nazi state indeed diverged from that of gay men, this episode shows that this assumption has a lot to do with what you think of as persecution. Sam's book, I Will Not Abandon You: Queer Women in Nazi Germany will be out in April and can be preordered here.

Episode 127 -- Bari Weiss, Part 2

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 05:51:45 GMT

In the second half of our two-part series on one of In Bed with the Right's bêtes noires, Adrian and Moira chart the resistible rise of Bari Weiss's from her time on the canceled-person circuit to the pinnacle of American news media. Topics covered: the rise of the Free Press and the decline of the free press; how a certain kind of Silicon Valley creep fell in love with what Bari was selling; how she rode the "vibe shift" among tech elites to maximum profit; and why the Trump-era may well prove her undoing.

Some of our sources for this episode:

On Bari's reign of terror at CBS: Clare Malone, "Inside Bari Weiss's Hostile Takeover of CBS"

Radley Balko's takedown of the Free Press piece about George Floyd: "The Retconning of George Floyd"

If you read German, and want to know more about the tech elite's "vibe shift" around 2020, you can check out Adrian's new book! (Or you can wait until September 10 to get the English version!)

Episode 126 -- Bari Weiss, Part 1

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 18:08:44 GMT

It's the first half of our (possibly? hopefully?) two-part series on In Bed with the Right final boss, Bari Weiss: reactionary centrist extraordinaire, #MeToo backlasher and the woman who parlayed a grifty "cancel culture" Substack into running pretty much 90% of the news you're still allowed to air on TV. This first episode deals with her origin story, up to her high-profile exit from the New York Times.

CONTENT NOTE: Yes, we know we're mispronouncing her name. It's really hard to get out of the habit, but we promise promise promise to get better at it before Part 2! We meant (in this one very specific instance) no disrespect.

Episode 124 -- Wuthering Heights

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 04:08:35 GMT

Last week, Adrian and Moira went to the movies and watched director Emerald Fennell's version of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (trailer here). In this episode they explore the gender politics of the novel, of this adaptation and what it says about the fate of romance fiction in the 2020s.

Here are some of the texts we refer to in the discussion or used in preparing for it:

Elizabeth Hardwick, "Working Girls: The Brontës"

Georges Bataille, "Literature and Evil"

Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, "The Madwoman in the Attic"

Episode 123 [PATREON PREVIEW] -- The Botstein Files

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 15:31:43 GMT

One of the men whose presence in the Epstein Files has been making a lot of news is Bard College's forever president Leon Botstein. While there is no suggestion that Botstein participated in any of Epstein's crimes, his relationship with Epstein was longstanding and close. Revelations about their interactions have brought to the forefront several symptomatic issues about how colleges handle sexual assault, campus anti-rape activists, and their young charges more generally. In this episode, Moira, herself a graduate of Bard (Class of 2012, baby!) walks Adrian through what the Epstein/Botstein friendship can tell us about the last 50 years of anti-feminist politics.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of articles we refer to in the episode:

-- Botstein's 1999 op-ed "Let Teenagers Try Adulthood" can be found here

-- Botstein's book Jefferson's Children can be found here

-- Sarah Gerard's Carrie Carolyn Coco: My Friend, Her Murder, and an Obsession with the Unthinkable can be purchased here

-- Reporting on the various lawsuits and Title IX investigations against Bard and its president can be found here (2015 case), here (2016 case), here (2020 case), here (2022 case)

Episode 122 -- Tech's Vibe Shift and AI Discourse

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 07:11:24 GMT

A few months ago, as part of the research for his forthcoming book What Tech Calls Governing, Adrian took a drive down Highway 101 from San Francisco to Palo Alto and back. This episode is about what the billboards along that stretch of highway tell us about Silicon Valley, about our tech elites, and about how technology is remaking society (it's not in the way you think).

If you'd like to buy Adrian's book, it's available for pre-order in the German edition only for now.

If you'd like to check out the work of Wendy Liu, whose column that Adrian and Moira refer to in the episode (and who did the drive with Adrian), you can find that here and here.

Episode 121 -- Moira's in the Epstein Files

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 22:53:13 GMT

The Epstein files are many things: a study in elite impunity, a deep core sample of societal misogyny, a record of institutional failure. But they also give us a fascinating, if terrifying, alternate story of #MeToo and what came after. For this episode, Moira and Adrian take the recent drop of several million more pages of Epstein emails--and Moira's walk-on cameo in them--to think about networked antifeminism, #MeToo backlash, the traffic in women as social conduit, and the solidarity of (allegedly, allegedly, allegedly) predatory men.

Episode 120 -- The Murder of Alex Pretti

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 07:33:32 GMT

On January 24, 2026, Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse at the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, was shot and killed by Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez in Minneapolis. In this episode, Moira and Adrian delve into questions of gender, solidarity, whiteness and the MAGA imagination as they pertain to the murder and the reaction across media and society.

Please note: We briefly mention the comparison sometimes made with the Nazi-era Gestapo. If this is a comparison that interests you, Moira and Adrian recorded an emergency episode on that group, its history, and the use of comparing it to ICE for our Patreon. You can find it here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-119-149640913

Episode 118 -- The Romantasy Boom

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 07:03:04 GMT

For this episode, Moira and Adrian are joined by Abby Kluchin from the Ordinary Unhappiness podcast to discuss a recent publishing phenomenon and its implications for gender politics: romantasy, a genre that's been emerging over the last 10 years with renewed force. Series like Sarah J. Maas's A Court of Thorns and Roses and the Empyrian-novels by Rebecca Yarros mix fantasy tropes with costume drama and pretty explicit sex scenes -- and they rely on a very particular kind of trauma heroine, and what seems to be a very particular understanding of gendered trauma.

Episode 117 -- Birth Control Misinformation

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 05:24:21 GMT

For this episode, Moira walks Adrian through the conservative attack on birth control, and in particular the influencer-led, MAHA-adjacent surge of misinformation about menstruation and birth control. At issue is ultimately a deeply reactionary, and deeply troubling picture of the gendered body and women's autonomy. Topics covered include: cycle synching, the politics of "naturalness" and the weaponization of legitimate grievances with the medical establishment for ideological purposes.

Here is the list of books/articles we refer to in this episode:

-- Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty (1998)

-- Mikaeli Anne Carmichael, Rebecca Louise Thomson, Lisa Jane Moran, Thomas Philip Wycherley, "The Impact of Menstrual Cycle Phase on Athletes’ Performance: A Narrative Review"

Episode 116 -- A Murder in Minneapolis

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 21:01:51 GMT

On January 7, 2026, Renee Nicole Good was murdered by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a killing that was captured by multiple camera phones and witnessed by dozens. Since the killing, the Trump administration has used several gendered lines of attack to discredit Renee Nicole Good, to celebrate the killing and to make propagandistic hay of this murder. In this emergency episode (recorded 2 days after the killing), Moira and Adrian talk about the killing, about the question of gender and where we go from here. Among the topics discussed: the echoes of the murder of George Floyd, the parallels with the Gestapo, and the "look what you made me do"-theory of authority.

Episode 115 [PATREON PREVIEW] -- Olivia Nuzzi's American Canto with Michael Hobbes

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 14:32:54 GMT

To start the year off right, Moira and Adrian were joined by Michael Hobbes to discuss Olivia Nuzzi's American Canto, the media hubbub about it, and what both artifacts say about our media environment, our elites, and about gender.

Pieces we cite in the episode:

Becca Rothfeld's review of the book in the Washington Post

Alexandra Jacobs' review of the book in The New York Times

Episode 114 -- Project 1933, Part X: December 1 - December 31

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 21:17:56 GMT

From the Vaults: Andrew Sullivan, Part 2

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 08:02:49 GMT

As a special Holiday treat, out from behind the paywall, here's the second part of our Andrew Sullivan episode -- or "Andrew 2: Electric Boogaloo", as we started calling it. Covering the full second half of the Life, Times and Opinions of Sullydish, Gentleman, aka the "We Didn't Start the Fire" of reactionary centrism: Barebacking, Substacking, Moira's misandry, 9/11, 5th Columnists, Other Columnists, Testosterone, Trans Kids...

If you enjoyed these two more in-depth episode, consider subscribing (or gifting a subscription) to In Bed with the Right on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/InBedWiththeRight

From the Vaults: Andrew Sullivan, Part 1

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 09:20:23 GMT

Happy Holidays from In Bed with the Right!!! Unfortunately, the festive season has gotten away from us and the two remaining episodes on our schedule are absolute monsters (the two-hour final (!) installment of Project 1933, and our episode on the media hubbub around "American Canto"), so to tide you over while we record and edit we thought we'd do a re-release of one of our Patreon magna opera from the Patreon. So this week, feast your ears on Part 1 (today) and Part 2 (Thursday) of our deep dive into the life and times of Andrew Sullivan -- editor, blogger, Iraq War hawk, and noted gender conservative! Our deep dive is -- fair warning -- about 3 hours long. But we felt Sullivan -- who is, as Moira put it, sort of "gender conservatism's Forrest Gump" -- was worth spending time with. He intersects with so many strands and trends, so many institutions and pathologies of the last forty years. Specifically, we're going through his complicated work by focusing on specific texts, by situating them in their moment and explaining their legacy. This first episode covers Sullivan's early years, 1980 - 1996: Oxford, Harvard, The New Republic, The Bell Curve, and Virtually Normal.

If you like what you've heard, and you haven't already, consider subscribing to our Patreon at patreon.com/InBedWiththeRight! We have a lot of cool episodes coming up, including the aforementioned one on NuzziGate, RFK Jr., and structures of impunity.

Episode 113: The 2025 Daytime Cursties (with Michael Hobbes)

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 15:01:36 GMT

It's cold outside, the Holidays are here, and you know what that means: It's Cursed-Discourse Awards-Season, motherf@ckers! Not-even-close-to-live from a theatre miles away from the Dolby Theater, it's the Third Annual Cursties!!! For the third year in a row, Moira, Adrian and special guest Michael Hobbes give out awards for the most cursed discourses around sex and gender for 2025. Problem is: we've dealt with so many cursed discourses around sex and gender in 2025, and pretty much all cursed discourses seem to have with gender panic these days. And In Bed with the Right has covered so so so so many of them!

So we decided to narrow our noms to one particular genre of cursedness this year, and to present awards for ... drumroll ... achievements in anti-wokeness.! From queer tieflings to kids getting coddled in the 4th dimension, from socialist mayors (and not the one you're thinking of!) to French people teaching Americans how to islamophobia, to the world's creepiest Blue Man Group, this one has something for everybody!

Some links to articles we mention:

-- Matt Bernstein's in-depth episode on the long dark road of Debra Messing can be found here

-- Adrian's New Republic article about a row over "islamogauchisme" in France can be found here

-- Michele Goodwin's interview with Jess Michaels as part of her series Surviving Epstein can be found here

Episode 112 -- The Natural Childbirth Movement

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 07:19:24 GMT

Moira walks Adrian through the strange, diagonalist history of the idea of "natural birth" -- from 1930s eugenicists to hippie communes, from radical feminist spaces to MAHA and the "wild birth"-movement. This episode comes with a bunch of trigger warnings -- please make sure you're in the right headspace before diving in!

Some of the texts we refer to in the episode:

Grantly Dick-Read, Natural Childbirth (1933)

Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born (1977)

Barbara Ehrenreich, Witches, Midwives and Nurses (1972)

Ina May Gaskin, Spiritual Midwifery (1975)

Episode 110 -- Project 1933, Part IX: November 1 - November 30

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 07:45:10 GMT

One quick content note: Adrian moved a little quickly through the election results about 25 minutes in. The first set of numbers he's talking about are the ones for the parliamentary election (where basically only Nazis could be voted for, but some non-Nazis were on the ballot). The second set of numbers are about the referendum about leaving the league of nations. Our apologies if this didn't become clear!

Episode 108 -- Live from San Francisco, It's Moral Panic Bingo Night!

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 07:27:32 GMT

To celebrate our 100th episode (belatedly), your intrepid hosts recently took to the stage of San Francisco's Swedish-American Hall for a special live Moral Panic Bingo Night. Moira and Adrian were joined by the amazing Sarah Marshall (of You're Wrong About) and Matt Bernstein (of A Bit Fruity) to talk about moral panics big and small, and how they continue to fuck up our lives. Stanley Cohen's Folk Devils and Moral Panics is linked here, sans awesome original cover. Sarah Marshall's 8-part CBC series The Devil You Know can be found here.

Episode 107 -- Did Women Ruin Everything?

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 07:20:07 GMT

In this episode, Moira walks Adrian through "The Great Feminization" -- a recent talk/essay that took the right wing by storm, and that subsequently got its author invited to discuss women ruining things in the New York Times. The essay posited that women's entry into the American workforce is to blame for ... wokeness? General societal disorder? The Decline of the West (TM)? Among the topics this episode touches on: the reasons why ideas like these are catching on at this particular moment; the reconceptualization of class distinction through (supposed) gender markers; the history of the "Great Feminization" thesis, and its relationship to "anti-liberal" and other "anti-woke" thinking on the Right.

A few links:

-- Helen Andrews, "The Great Feminization"

-- "Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?", Helen Andrews in Conversation with Leah Libresco Sargeant and Ross Douthat

-- Becca Rothfeld's review of Leah Libresco Sargeant's The Dignity of Dependence, which Moira mentioned in the episode, can be found here.

Episode 106 -- Spousal Rape and the Rideout Case

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 06:20:07 GMT

In this episode, writer Sarah Weinman walks Moira and Adrian through the story of the 1978 case Oregon v. Rideout and how spousal rape became a crime in the US. Weinman's book about the case -- Without Consent -- is out now. A moving, upsetting story about how the judicial system keeps pace (or doesn't) with legislation; how media shape how we think about social progress; and how that progress can come from strange places. PLEASE NOTE: This one comes with basically all the trigger and content warnings.

Episode 104 -- Project 1933, Part VIII: October 1 - October 31

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 07:35:06 GMT

On the episode we mention our LIVE SHOW: if you're interested in joining us in San Francisco on November 20, tickets can be purchased here.

A selection of books we consulted for or referred to in this episode:

Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy

Albrecht Ritschl, "Deficit Spending in the Nazi Recovery, 1933-1938"

Götz Aly, Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State

Christiane Kuller, Bürokratie und Verbrechen: Antisemitische Finanzpolitik und Verwaltungspraxis im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland

Episode 102 -- Powers of Horror (Film), Part 2

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 06:00:24 GMT

To get you ready for spooky season, here's In Bed with the Right with a second look at some classic horror films, asking: What's scary about gender? And what's gendered about fear in these movies? The second part of our "Powers of Horror (Film)" two-parter dives into two more classic 1970s horror, into changing workplaces and fairy tales, into gialli and mouths with mouths in them. Our focus is on 1977's Suspiria and 1979's Alien. Hope you enjoy!

Episode 101 -- Powers of Horror (Film), Part 1

Tue, 21 Oct 2025 05:22:34 GMT

Just in time for spooky season, here's In Bed with the Right with a look at some classic horror films, asking: What's scary about gender? And what's gendered about fear in these movies? In keeping with the Halloween theme, we got way into this and watched way too many scary movies. And so we made a two parter. This first part dives into 1973's The Wicker Man and 1976's Carrie. The second part will be about Suspiria (1977) and Alien (1979).

Here are the texts we refer to in this episode:

Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"

Carol Clover, Men, Women and Chainsaws (1992)

Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror (1982)

David Sanjek, "Twilight of the Monsters: The English Horror Film 1968-1975"

Episode 100 -- Mailbag, Part 2

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 06:20:09 GMT

You guys, IBWTR just hit 100 episodes! And we'll be honest, this milestone snuck up on us. We'll be celebrating this anniversary over the next few episodes -- including a deep dive into CBS News' new boss, another Wagner-show, and a Live Show in San Francisco! But for now we thought we'd kick off our festivities by tackling more questions from you, our amazing listeners! We ended up with a far-ranging conversation about #MeToo, cinema, bodies, hormones and Doing the Reading! Hope you enjoy! (Oh, and Adrian's Substack post on Tár can be found here.)

Episode 99 -- Fetal Personhood

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 14:36:56 GMT

Fetal personhood is one of those doctrines that have moved from the fringes of the conservative legal movement (and even from the fringes of right wing theology) to the center. While it is not clear how much support there is at the US Supreme Court for the idea that fetuses are people and have rights under the 14th Amendment, this once-obscure doctrine has been filtering into abortion and pregnancy criminalization since the Dobbs decision. In this episode, Moira walks Adrian through the strange history of this doctrine, and through its awful consequences for pregnant people or those who can become pregnant. (Content Warning: discussions of pregnancy loss and sexual violence)

Here is a list of the books we relied on in researching this episode -- all of these are very much worth your time:

Mary Ziegler, Persohood: The New Civil War Over Reproduction (2025)

Jennifer Holland, Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement (2020) (you can also watch a 2021 conversation between Adrian, Jennifer Holland and Melissa Murray here)

Leslie J. Reagan, When Abortion was a Crime (new edition 2022)

Michelle Goodwin, Policing the Womb (2022)

Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City (1997)

Pregnancy Justice, Pregnancy as a Crime: A Preliminary Report on the First Year After Dobbs

Episode 98 -- Project 1933, Part VII: September 1 - September 30

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 06:47:02 GMT

A selection of books we consulted for or referred to in this episode:

Jürgen Trimborn, Leni Riefenstahl: A Life

Dagmar Herzog, Sex after Fascism

Kate Elswit, Watching Weimar Dance

Claudia Schmölders, Hitler's Face: The Biography of an Image

Susan Sontag, "Fascinating Fascism"

Adrian Daub, "Hannah, Can You Hear Me?"

Episode 96 -- Phyllis Schlafly, Part 2

Tue, 23 Sep 2025 06:20:10 GMT

This is the second part of our epic deep dive into the life of Phyllis Schlafly -- the far-right firebrand who brought down an amendment and arguably helped transform a political party. In Part 2, Moira walks Adrian through Schlafly's attack on the Equal Rights Amendment, and how she pioneered a whole new style of politics to defeat what had been essentially a done deal -- or carried it into the mainstream, at any rate.

Here is a list of books we'll be referring to in both parts of this episode:

Andrea Dworkin, Right Wing Women

Jane J. Mansbridge, How We Lost the ERA

Marjorie J. Spruill, Divided We Stand

Donald T. Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism

Phyllis Schlafly, A Choice Not an Echo

Phyllis Schlafly, Strike from Space

Episode 94 -- Phyllis Schlafly, Part 1

Tue, 16 Sep 2025 06:10:09 GMT

In this episode, Moira walks Adrian through the life and times of Phyllis Schlafly -- the far-right firebrand who brought down an amendment and arguably helped transform a political party. This first part charts Schlafly's path before she launched her crusade against the Equal Rights Amendment, focusing on: Paleoconservatism, America First, the John Birch Society, Cold Warriors, Goldwater Gilrls and space-based weaponry (for some reason).

Here is a list of books we'll be referring to in both parts of this episode:

Andrea Dworkin, Right Wing Women

Jane J. Mansbridge, How We Lost the ERA

Marjorie J. Spruill, Divided We Stand

Donald T. Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism

Phyllis Schlafly, A Choice Not an Echo

Phyllis Schlafly, Strike from Space

Episode 93 -- Project 1933, Part VI: August 1 - August 31

Tue, 02 Sep 2025 06:40:08 GMT

For this episode of In Bed with the Right, Adrian and Moira return to the year 1933. They continue the story of how Hitler seized power, what it did to society, what it felt like to live through it, and -- as always -- what role gender and sexuality played in events. Reminder: We're going month by month for these episodes. This sixth installment covers August 1 to August 31, 1933. Meaning: This is a summer episode. It finds many of the institutions the Nazis have subjugated on summer break, the ongoing processes of synchronization and Nazification either already completed or about to kick into high gear. So this is an episode about the little stuff, the summer things: what our bodies do as the institutions betray us, how external pressures create coalitions, but also open up fissures, how old identities disappear without anything quite ready to take their place. And of course: what happens to our sense of time at times of peril. It's an episode full of small, interpersonal dramas, nervousness, regret and fear for the future -- punctuated by sudden outbursts of state-sanctioned violence and political cruelty. It is, in other words, a perfect episode for the summer of 2025.

Episode 91 -- The Mailbag Episode, Part 1

Tue, 19 Aug 2025 05:37:49 GMT

It's taken us forever to do this, but here it is at last: In Bed With the Right's first ever mailbag episode! We asked our Patreon supporters to send in questions, and they sent tons and tons. All of them were brilliant and fun, and because we wanted to answer as many of them, and because we couldn't shut up when answering them, it's only Part 1! This episode delves into how the podcast came to be, our main takeaways from Project 1933, the history of HR departments, identity politics, the "girl code", and what gives us hope for the future (yes, really!).

Episode 89: IQ Fetishism with Quinn Slobodian

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 01:11:58 GMT

Historian Quinn Slobodian (Crack-Up Capitalism, Hayek's Bastards, and the forthcoming Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed) walks Moira and Adrian through the fate of IQ on late 20th century and early 21st century right wing thought. How did this concept bring together the nationalist right and self-described libertarians? How did it become a load bearing self-identifier for many a "gifted" kid of the 1990s? And how did it take hold so thoroughly among the Silicon Valley elite?

Episode 88 -- Project 1933, Part V: July 1 - July 31

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 07:00:12 GMT

For this episode of In Bed with the Right, Adrian and Moira return to the year 1933. They continue the story of how Hitler seized power, what it did to society, what it felt like to live through it, and -- as always -- what role gender and sexuality played in events. Reminder: We're going month by month for these episodes. This fifth installment covers July 1 to June 31, 1933 -- and is devoted entirely to two separate, but intertwined phenomena: Nazi collaborators and the Catholic Church. We cover the different valences of resistance and collaborations in Germany in 1933 -- from culture war stuff, to Nazification, to practices like the Hitler salute. But we also cover the tricky situation of the Catholic Center Party in 1933, and the "Reichskonkordat", a treaty concluded in July that gave the Catholic Church a measure of autonomy within the Nazi state ... but at the cost of an oath of loyalty to Hitler's state.

Episode 87: The Epstein Files with Patrick Blanchfield

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 06:50:08 GMT

2025's strangest scandal involves facts that have been known for years and absolutely no new information. And yet it has managed to keep consummate bullshitter Donald Trump seemingly flatfooted. In this episode, Patrick Blanchfield (co-host of Ordinary Unhappiness) joins Moira and Adrian to talk Epstein, the files, the coverup, Trump and the return of the not-at-all repressed. The conversation touches on the gender politics of revelation, conspiracies real and imagined, blood libel, and the long shadow of #MeToo. Lots and lots of trigger warnings obviously!

Episode 85: The Moonies

Tue, 22 Jul 2025 05:00:55 GMT

Moira walks Adrian through the long, twisty story of the Moonies -- a story that, somewhat improbably, brings together North Korea, the Hudson Valley, the murder of Shinzo Abe and New England fisheries. And weddings. Just so many weddings.

From behind the Paywall: Episode 51: The George Circle

Tue, 08 Jul 2025 06:50:09 GMT

We first recorded this episode -- on the gaggle of bizarre right-wing cranks around the German poet Stefan George (1868 - 1933) -- for IBTWR's Patreon. It's one we're very proud of, and it's also an interesting complement to our ongoing Project 1933. Hope you like it!

Episode 82 -- Project 1933, Part IV: June 1 to June 30

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 07:20:08 GMT

Here are the books we refer to in this episode:

Daniel Siemens, The Stormtrooper: A New History

Andrew Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families: homosexuality and community in the early Nazi

Movement

Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies

Daniel Siemens: Horst Wessel. Tod und Verklärung eines Nationalsozialisten (2009)

Episode 81: MLM Nation with Bridget Read

Tue, 17 Jun 2025 07:30:00 GMT

Journalist Bridget Read talks with Moira and Adrian about the most American of scams, the multi-level marketing (MLM) scheme. Companies like Amway, Mary Kay and Herbalife have had an outsize impact on American politics, and have been an insidious and at times covert part of the backlash against women's liberation, labor organizing and civil rights. This one has it all: eugenics, scammy Stanford-grads, and alfalfa. So much alfalfa. Bridget's book on the pyramid scheme, Little Bosses Everywhere, is on sale now and is absolutely fantastic!

Episode 78 -- Project 1933, Part III: May 1 to May 31

Wed, 28 May 2025 05:08:44 GMT

Here are the books/texts we refer to in this episode:

Timothy Mason, Nazism, Fascism and the Working Class (1995)

Laurie Marhoefer, Sex and the Weimar Republic (2016)

Richard J. Evans, “Workers didn’t bring us Fascism”, Jacobin (2021)

Richard J. Evans, The Feminist Movement in Germany, 1894-1933 [here on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/feministmovement0000evan/page/238/mode/2up]

Barbara Greven-Aschoff, Die bürgerliche Frauenbewegung in Deutschland 1894–1933 (1981)

Jens Dobler, Polizei und Homosexuelle in der Weimarer Republik (2020)

Rainer Herrn, Der Liebe und dem Leid: Das Institut für Sexualwissenschaft 1919-1933 (2022)

Episode 77: San Francisco

Tue, 20 May 2025 05:10:03 GMT

Moira and Adrian tackle the longstanding conservative fixation on the city of San Francisco, its people and its mores. From demographic anxieties, via Joan Didion's hippie-hate, to disaster movies, doom loops, and progressive prosecutors -- the history of SF-hate is a history of US politics.

Books and media cited in this episode:

Joseph Plaster, Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco's Tenderloin (2023)

Susan Stryker, Victor Silverman (dirs.), Screaming Queens (2005)

Thom Andersen, Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003)

David Talbot, Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love (2013)

Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)

Eve Babitz, Eve's Hollywood (1974)

Mike Davis, City of Quartz (1990)

Episode 76: Depp v. Heard with Kat Tenbarge

Tue, 13 May 2025 06:10:55 GMT

In this episode, Moira and Adrian are joined by journalist Kat Tenbarge for a look back at the media spectacle that was actor Johnny Depp's April/May 2022 defamation suit against his ex-wife, actress Amber Heard. The conversation touches on #MeToo backlash, what counts as evidence in the social media age, content creation and YouTube commenting, and why some women find online misogyny persuasive.

Episode 74: The Trustees (with Lauren Lassabe Shepherd)

Tue, 06 May 2025 18:31:39 GMT

Have you been enjoying stories about all-powerful student activist groups shutting down vigorous debate on college campuses? Of the insidious cabals of Performance Studies professors thwarting the progress of science? Well, wait till you get a load of the people who actually run the show. In this episode, Moira and Adrian are joined by Lauren Lassabe Shepherd (of the American Campus podcast) to discuss the trustees, their role in university governance, why we tended not to hear much about them ... and why suddenly, in 2025, we very much do!

Books, articles and podcasts discussed in this episode:

Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars (2023)

William F. Buckley, God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom' (1951)

Richard White, Who Killed Jane Stanford? A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits and the Birth of a University (2022)

Matt Seybold, The Gilded Network (Podcast, 2025)

Nathan Heller, "Will Harvard Bend or Break" (The New Yorker, 2025)

Episode 73 -- Roy Cohn with Matt Sitman (Part 2)

Tue, 29 Apr 2025 04:59:45 GMT

The second part of Moira and Adrian's long conversation with Matt Sitman of Know Your Enemy on Roy Cohn -- lawyer to various deplorables, closet case and mentor to a young Donald Trump. This part deals with Cohn's return to New York, his work for the mob, the Church, and the drugs.

Here are the books and documentaries we discuss in this first half:

-- Nicholas von Hoffman, Citizen Cohn: The Life and Times of Roy Cohn (1988)

-- Ivy Meeropol (dir.), Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn (2019)

-- Matt Tyrnauer (dir.), Where's My Roy Cohn? (2019)

Episode 71 -- Roy Cohn with Matt Sitman (Part 1)

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 05:37:15 GMT

Moira and Adrian are joined by Matt Sitman of Know Your Enemy to discuss the life of Roy Cohn -- lawyer, closet case and ratfucker extraordinaire. This first part deals with Cohn's childhood, the Rosenberg trial, and his time with Sen. McCarthy.

Here are the books and documentaries we discuss in this first half:

-- Nicholas von Hoffman, Citizen Cohn: The Life and Times of Roy Cohn (1988)

-- Ivy Meeropol (dir.), Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn (2019)

-- Matt Tyrnauer (dir.), Where's My Roy Cohn? (2019)

-- Christopher M. Elias, Gossip Men: J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and the Politics of Insinuation (2021)

-- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (1990)

Episode 70 -- Project 1933, Part II: March 15 to April 15

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 04:40:28 GMT

Episode 68 -- Republican Makeup with Jessica DeFino

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 05:38:10 GMT

When it comes to the protagonists of MAGA world, they -- like Roxette circa 1990 -- have THE LOOK. You know the one: hair that rises and crests like a mountain range, lips that are strangely beige and eyes that really show off how dead the person is on the inside. How did this style come to define the modern conservative aesthetic? What are its influences? What are its messages? Jessica DeFino (of The Review of Beauty fame) stops by In Bed with the Right to help Moira and a very lost Adrian make some sense of these and other questions.

Episode 67 -- Project 1933, Part I: January to March 15

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 05:19:38 GMT

Germany 1933 is having a bit of a moment. Which made us at In Bed with the Right decide to explore that year in detail. In this series, Adrian and Moira tell the story of how Hitler seized power, what it did to society, what it felt like to live through it, and -- as always -- what role gender and sexuality played in events. We will be going month by month for these episodes, but this first installment cheats a little bit and covers January 1 to March 15.

Episode 65 -- "So Long, Pamela Paul" with Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri

Tue, 25 Mar 2025 05:16:59 GMT

Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri of If Books Could Kill visit In Bed with the Right to talk about the life, times and very, very milquetoast opinions of Pamela Paul, who recently departed from her perch as the New York Times columnist Bluesky loves to hate. Paul emblematizes many aspects of public discourse over the last 5-10 years -- from the emergence of "reactionary centrism" to the renewed freakouts over campus speech, from the panic over trans kids to Gen X's drift to the right. Also this one has an airhorn.

Episode 64: Whither the Preachers? With Kristin Kobes Du Mez

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 07:00:10 GMT

Moira and Adrian welcome historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Jesus and John Wayne) to talk about what happens to conservative "preacher" masculinity in the age of swaggering, crass and often libertine sexuality.

Episode 62: AI Slop and the New Fascist Aesthetic with Roland Meyer

Tue, 11 Mar 2025 05:12:28 GMT

Why have our new right-wing overlords taken such a shine to chintzy, shiny AI slop? What is persuasive about these phony, artless, slightly desperate images? How do they originate, and how do they circulate? For this episode, Moira and Adrian are joined by Roland Meyer, who is a professor of digital cultures and arts at the University of Zurich and the University of the Arts in Zurich, Switzerland. If you're trying to picture the kinds of image they're discussing, it might be helpful to check out Roland's huge thread on Bluesky. And if you're trying to follow along with our discussion of specific images, we have collected a bunch of the examples we discuss in the episode here.

Episode 60: Emergency Episode: The German Elections

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 10:44:06 GMT

Germany voted for a new parliament last Sunday, and if you weren't ready for the words "far right" "Germany" and "20% of the vote" to pop up on your doom bingo, well, then you don't know 2025. Journalist Annika Brockschmidt stops by the pod to talk Adrian and Moira through Germany's political system, how the election results will impact it, and what the results suggest about Germany's future.

Episode 58: The Pelicot Trial with Manon Garcia

Tue, 18 Feb 2025 07:30:09 GMT

TW: This episode is almost entirely about a horrifying case of sustained and organized rape.

On December 19, 2024 a court in Avignon, France convicted Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men of rape. It was the conclusion to a spectacular case and trial that galvanized (parts of) France. The victim, Gisèle Pelicot, chose to allow the trial to be public, flipping the script on the way France had thus far metabolized #MeToo: "shame", as Gisèle Pelicot put it, "has changed sides." Philosopher Manon Garcia attended the proceedings in Avignon, and now speaks with Moira and Adrian about what the case says about patriarchy, misogyny, masculinity and collective memory.

Episode 57: Mark Zuckerberg

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 05:58:07 GMT

Moira and Adrian delve into the career and political trajectory of Mark Zuckerberg. From Facemash to The Facebook to the Metaverse to putting on an absurd amount of sunscreen, they trace Mark Zuckerberg's (and Silicon Valley's) complicated relationship to gender. They explore how data, platforms, innovation and disruption, and guiding Silicon Valley figures like the genius and the drop-out are gendered, and how Zuckerberg's trajectory both reflects this gendered hierarchy and its breakdown. [You can find Adrian's book What Tech Calls Thinking here.]

Episode 55: Emergency Episode: Mark Joseph Stern on Executive Action

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 23:56:06 GMT

Donald Trump is issuing executive orders faster than people seem to be able to metabolize what's happening. And many of them have to do with gender, sexuality and wokeness! So Moira and Adrian turn to an expert -- Slate.com's intrepid legal reporter Mark Joseph Stern -- to make sense of at least some of the ones we know about in this special emergency episode. Check out Mark's article on the bizarre (and since possibly rescinded) "spending freeze" at Slate here, Adrian's run-down of the EO on gender affirming care here, and Moira's more hopeful note on the opposition all this will run into here.

Episode 53: The Moynihan Report

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 06:57:44 GMT

The Moynihan Report (1965) written by later New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) is an important document in the backlash against the Civil Rights era, but it constitutes an important document in gender conservatism as well. In this episode, Adrian and Moira read through the report in some detail, and talk about the many brilliant critiques level at Moynihan and his project pretty much from the start. You can find the report here, and Hortense Spiller's brilliant dissection of it here. [Note: there are a couple of words in this episode that we weren't wild about saying. Just be warned.]

Episode 50: The Second Annual Cursties, Part II

Tue, 24 Dec 2024 14:52:31 GMT

In what is already being described as a Festivus miracle, we present you -- at long last! -- the second part of the Second Annual Cursties! It's Moira, Adrian and special guest Michael Hobbes doing the annual airing of the grievances (we're deferring the feats of strength until next year). Featuring the most cursed discourses of this particularly cursed-discourse rich year: with walk-on cameos by Octavian George Collins, the Power Gay, Charli XCX and many many more.

Episode 49: The Second Annual Cursties, Part I

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 08:10:06 GMT

2024's hottest awards show is THE SECOND ANNUAL CURSTIES. Conjured up by Adrian, Moira and special returning guest Michael Hobbes, this all-gay gabfest has everything. Rapid onset transphobia! How to divorce Matt Walsh! The White Lotus! That thing where a heterosexual is so heterosexual it ... seems kind of gay?

Stay tuned for the second half of this episode (and for another Episode Note referencing an SNL skit that's so old it can now legally apply for a learner's permit) next week!

Episode 47: Trans Kids

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 07:12:29 GMT

Moira walks Adrian through the right wing fixation on trans kids and the way it is reshaping our politics. In early December, the US Supreme Court heard US v. Skrmetti, and is almost certain to uphold a Tennessee law banning most forms of gender-affirming care for minors. In 2016, a trans bathroom ban in North Carolina led to a nationwide outcry and boycotts. Eight years later, laws like Tennessee's SB1 have passed in a majority of US States, and the outcry is comparatively muted. What happened?

Episode 46: Live from City Lights Books it's THE CANCEL CULTURE PANIC

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 08:10:07 GMT

Back in September, Adrian and Moira did an event at San Francisco's legendary City Lights Bookstore for an event launching Adrian's new book The Cancel Culture Panic: How an American Obsession went Global. It was a memorable, energized and often delightfully weird evening that we're thrilled to bring you (slightly edited) as a special episode of In Bed with the Right.

Episode 44: So You Want to be a Right-Wing Grifter... with Matt Bernstein

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 08:16:20 GMT

As a special holiday treat, podcaster extraordinaire Matt Bernstein (A Bit Fruity) joins Moira and Adrian to talk about the right wing grift machine. It's a tough world out there, so here's your step by step guide to completely selling your soul for some sweet, sweet reactionary billionaire cash! Detours include: Candace Owens, Oli London, Riley Gaines, Chaya Raichik, and various Twinks for Tr**p.

Speaking of grifting: If you like the show, consider supporting it via its brand new Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/InBedWiththeRight! It may or may not also a perfect gift for the red-pilled anti-wokester in your life!

Episode 42: 2024 Election Debrief, Part I

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 07:48:33 GMT

Moira and Adrian delve reluctantly into the horror, the horror -- aka the results of the 2024 presidential election. We didn't realize it when we recorded it, but this will be first installment in a series. This episode touches on split ticket voting, post-election anti-wokeness debates, the "tech bro" narrative.

In the episode, we also mention Kate Manne's Substack essay "Trump's Election is a Triumph of Rape Culture" -- and we point folks to the new IBWTR Patreon! Like and subscribe, as they say!

Episode 41: George Gilder and the Birth of Right-Wing Silicon Valley

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 07:04:21 GMT

Stanford researcher Becca Lewis talks Moira and Adrian through the life and influence of George Gilder, who started out as a standard anti-feminist and then reinvented himself as an evangelist for Silicon Valley, supply-side economics ... and also anti-feminism.

A Very Special Announcement from In Bed With the Right

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 06:42:02 GMT

In Bed With the Right has an announcement: the show is coming to Patreon! You can sign up for extra content (2 episodes per month!) here! But our main feed (meaning episodes wherever you have been listening to us) will not be affected -- in fact, there's a new episode coming Tuesday. But if you'd like to hear Moira and Adrian talk their way through some weirder, wilder, more niche topics -- such as conservative fixations on Precious Bodily Fluids --, well, then check out the Patreon!

Episode 39: The Meme Wars with Morgan Sung

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 08:10:06 GMT

Journalist Morgan Sung (who hosts the terrific podcast Close All Tabs ) talks Moira and Adrian through the memes, stan armies, influencers, hatewatchers, bots and trolls of the 2024 election. How has digital campaigning changed since 2016? How do the platforms influence our politics?

Episode 38: The 2024 Election

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 05:52:23 GMT

Hey, did you know there's an election coming up? And that gender might have something to do with the outcome? In this special emergency episode (recorded on Oct. 30, 2024), Moira and Adrian talk about how gender is influencing the final stages of the campaign, as well as how gender influences how the campaign is being metabolized by the media. They also watch a clip shared by Elon Musk, so you don't have to.

Episode 37: We Need to Talk About Usha

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 15:44:41 GMT

Moira and Adrian talk with New York writer and CNN contributor Irin Carmon about Usha Vance and the liberal-coded women in the orbit of the various MAGA men.

Episode 36: Jordan Carroll on Science Fiction and the Alt Right

Tue, 22 Oct 2024 05:38:00 GMT

Jordan Carroll, author of the new book Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (which you can buy here) walks Moira and Adrian through the connections between science fiction fandom, gender conservatism and the Alt Right. Space marines, aliens, Bene Gesserit, and insane God Emperors: this one has them all!

Episode 35: Talia Lavin on the Christian Right's View of Marriage/Parenting

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 20:31:51 GMT

Author Talia Lavin (whose Wild Faith is out on 10/15/24) talks Moira and Adrian through the Christian Right's takeover of American life, through objects that are unlikely to appear on your bookshelf, but that nevertheless shape the way many Americans live and what policies they have to live with. From the parenting manuals like James Dobson's Dare to Discipline to Stormy Omartian's marriage guide Power of a Praying Wife, Talia lays out how an image of the family and child-rearing built on subservience, authoritarianism and often enough violence has become part and parcel of our American landscape. (A big trigger warning on domestic, physical and sexual abuse.)

Episode 34: The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives

Wed, 09 Oct 2024 14:27:57 GMT

Moira and Adrian grab their Stanley cup and identical hair extensions to follow guest Kate Kelly into the reality show phenomenon "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives" -- an episode all about the gender politics of the LDS Church, mixed orientation marriages, and, for some reason, "soft swinging".

Episode 33: The VP Debate

Thu, 03 Oct 2024 04:26:17 GMT

It's debate night in America, and you know what that means: MASCULINITY THUNDERDOME! In this special emergency episode, Moira and Adrian discuss the different styles of masculinity on display at the vice presidential debate. You can find Moira's article on this debate here.

Episode 32: In-Vitro Fertilization

Tue, 01 Oct 2024 19:16:40 GMT

Moira talks Adrian through the latest fissure in the war on reproductive freedom: in-vitro fertilzation! A fixation of conservative Protestants and the Catholic Church alike, a stand-in for changing family structures, queer families -- but also a serious losing issue for the Republican Party! Come for a discussion of ensoulment, noctural emissions, and stay for St. Brigid, Saint and abortion provider!

Episode 31: Pro-Natalism

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 11:00:36 GMT

In this episode of In Bed With The Right, Moira walks Adrian through the long, creepy history of pro-natalism, and its resurgence amongst conservatives. It is textbook 'weird'!

Episode 30: The Olympic Games (of Gender Panic)

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 06:57:13 GMT

In honor of the Olympic Games in Paris and of the way conservatives seem intent to freak out about them almost daily, Adrian walks Moira through the various ginned-up controversies: drag queens recreating paintings! Female boxers boxing! People either conforming or not conforming to their gender!

Episode 29: Harris

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 11:01:05 GMT

In another emergency episode in a veritable era of emergencies, Adrian and Moira discuss the gender politics surrounding Vice President Kamala Harris's presidential campaign, her potential VP picks, coconut trees, and those darn Democratic cat ladies á la J.D. Vance.

Episode 28: Richard Wagner: Act III

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 11:00:24 GMT

Alex Ross, music critic for the New Yorker and author of the book ‘Wagnerism’ joins Moira and Adrian to talk about Siegfried, the Wagner clan, and Wagner’s complicated and multifaceted legacy.

Episode 27: Biden

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 04:00:27 GMT

Moira and Adrian talk about Joe Biden's campaign, about the age question and the fallout from the calamitous presidential debate. NOTE: We recorded this before the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, which is why we don't talk about it here.

Episode 26: J.D. Vance with Gabe Winant

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 20:01:13 GMT

In a special emergency episode, Moira and Adrian talk with historian Gabe Winant about J.D. Vance, Donald Trump's pick for vice president. Gender, class and the political ascendancy of creep masculinity.

Episode 25: Richard Wagner: Act II

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 12:00:21 GMT

Adrian and Moira return for another episode on the life and works of Richard Wagner, investigating the radical political/philosophical influences that led him to some of the good, the bad, and the downright racist tropes in his operas.

Episode 24: LIVE SHOW Anita Bryant with Sarah Marshall of You’re Wrong About

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 12:01:27 GMT

For this live show, Moira and Adrian blinking step into the big world and come face to face with other human beings! Specifically Sarah Marshall of the amazing “You’re Wrong About” podcast, and an audience of 60 lovely people on Stanford’s campus. Together they discuss the life and times of Anita Bryant, OG anti-gay crusader—and why we’re still living in an America she helped shape.

Episode 23: RFK Jr.

Tue, 28 May 2024 11:55:51 GMT

Moira walks Adrian through the strange, tragic, enraging life of RFK Jr.—vaccine skeptic, presidential candidate, and literal brain worm survivor. Along the way, your hosts touch on Kennedy masculinity, American aristocracy, and the fine art of styling yourself as an outsider while the whole world can't stop deferring to you.

Episode 22: Richard Wagner: Act I

Tue, 14 May 2024 17:11:11 GMT

Adrian leads Moira through the life and career of composer Richard Wagner—a not-so-great man with some of world history's worst fans. Aesthetics, politics, revolutionary zeal that curdles into something far more ominous! This one is—as befits its source material—epic!

Episode 21: "The Campus" in the American Imagination with Samuel Catlin

Sat, 04 May 2024 22:01:37 GMT

Samuel Catlin (University at Buffalo) joins Moira and Adrian to talk about "The Campus" -- about the peculiar mental image Americans seem to have, how little it comports with reality, and the uncanny power of that it nevertheless exercises.

You can read Samuel's essay "The Campus Does Not Exist" over at Parapraxis magazine: https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/the-campus-does-not-exist

You can read Moira Weigel's article "Hating Theory" (which we refer to in the episode) here: https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/21427

And you can pre-order Adrian's book "The Cancel Culture Panic" (which he's heavily cribbing from in this ep) here: https://www.amazon.com/Cancel-Culture-Panic-American-Obsession/dp/1503640841/

Episode 20: Conservatism's Daddy Issues

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 10:01:09 GMT

Moira and Adrian speak to political scientist Jeff Dudas about his 2017 book Raised Right: Fatherhood in Modern American Conservatism. The conversation touches on campus panics, Clarence Thomas's many father figures, and neoconservative failsons.

Episode 19: Judith Butler's Who's Afraid of Gender?

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 14:24:32 GMT

In this episode, Moira and Adrian delve into Judith Butler's latest book -- about the worldwide movement against "gender" and the role it plays in right-wing politics.

Episode 18: Trad Wives

Tue, 09 Apr 2024 05:32:18 GMT

Moira guides Adrian through the strange, troubling world of tradwifery -- the latest trend in butter-churning, vaguely religious gender conservatism that's taken over your Instagram feed. Come for Adrian's immediate discomfort, stay for Moira's grand unifying theory that links Phyllis Schlafly, the #Girlbosses of the 2010s and unnervingly peppy women currently hand-weaving their childrens' sweaters for social media clout!

Episode 17: Otto Weininger, or Gender and Anti-Semitism

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 00:36:42 GMT

Adrian takes Moira into the wild, wildly misogynist and deeply depressing world of Otto Weininger (1880-1903). A posterchild for all manner of fin-de-siècle neuroses, to say nothing for massive quantities of self-hatred, Weininger may be a footnote today -- but he was deeply and weirdly influential in his own time.

Episode 16: Kate Manne on Anti-Fatness

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 20:55:03 GMT

Philosopher Kate Manne (Down Girl, Entitled) joins Moira and Adrian to talk about the politics of anti-fatness – where fatphobia came from historically, how it intersects with racism, sexism and transphobia, and how interpreting bodies according to moralizing principles remains a right-wing idea that succeeds even in the leftiest of spaces.

Episode 15: Taylor Swift

Tue, 13 Feb 2024 15:10:20 GMT

Follow Adrian following Moira following various conservative pundits down what is already shaping up to be one of 2024 weirder rabbit holes: the Great Taylor Swift Conspiracy! What it says about electoral politics in 2024, shifting media ecosystems and the long history of masculinity-mysticism.

Episode 14: Prisoner of Sex – Norman Mailer vs. Kate Millett and Women

Tue, 09 Jan 2024 08:30:25 GMT

In her 1970 book “Sexual Politics” feminist critic Kate Millett devoted 20 pages to a critique of novelist and public intellectual Norman Mailer. In this episode Moira guides Adrian through Mailer’s very cool, very level-headed response: a 250 page screed against Millett in particular and feminism in general.

Episode 13: The Cursties with Michael Hobbes

Fri, 22 Dec 2023 19:52:56 GMT

2023 was a year rich in truly cursed discourses, In Bed With the Right has already analyzed many of them. In this episode — our first annual CURSTIES — your able hosts (with guest Michael Hobbes) analyze a few that have fallen through the cracks, and vote for the most cursed discourse of the year!

Episode 12: The Morehouse Man with Saida Grundy

Sat, 16 Dec 2023 04:41:48 GMT

Founded in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, Morehouse College in Atlanta remains one of the most elite HBCUs. As Prof. Saida Grundy argues, the all-male college also sheds light on gender conservatism, Black masculinity and the politics of respectability.

Episode 11: Homocons

Mon, 04 Dec 2023 17:49:24 GMT

Together with their guest, historian Samuel Hueneke, Moira and Adrian delve into the history of the homocons. Gay (and sometimes, very sometimes, lesbian) conservatives. Toggling between the beginnings of the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, the gay marriage fracas of the early aughts and today's anti-trans panics, they ask: is this an invariant of queer public life? Or is there a history and tradition here?

Episode 10: Nietzsche and his Heirs

Mon, 27 Nov 2023 22:46:44 GMT

Moira and Adrian continue their earlier discussion of the thought and influence of Friedrich Nietzsche — morality and the critique of metaphysics, antisemitism and anti-feminism.

Episode 9: Marriage Boosters with Rebecca Traister

Wed, 15 Nov 2023 19:34:45 GMT

Every few years, it seems, a set of academics and pundits discovers marriage as a panacea for a host of social ills — poverty, unhappiness, social cohesion, research assistants. Moira, Adrian and their guest, New York Magazine writer Rebecca Traister, are less-than-excited to report it’s back and just as threadbare as ever. But this time — since this is the 2020s — with a dollop of “this is something the woke left doesn’t want us to talk about”. A long conversation about feminism, capitalism, anti-feminism, the neocons, data and vibes.

Episode 8: Nietzsche

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 18:00:36 GMT

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) is one of the 19th century's most versatile, counterintuitive and ... well, misogynistic thinkers. Moira and Adrian talk about the legacy of his thought in later movements, both feminist and anti-feminist, and about a specific style of irony and contrarianism that Nietzsche pioneered and that seems to thrive in the internet age -- often enough in league with reactionary gender politics.

Episode 7: The “Transsexual Empire” with Susan Stryker

Mon, 25 Sep 2023 16:25:35 GMT

Often considered the ur-text of trans-exclusionary feminism, Janice Raymond’s “The Transsexual Empire” came out in 1979, but rehearses a bunch of tropes you could just as well get off JK Rowling’s Twitter feed. In their conversation with historian Susan Stryker, Moira and Adrian explore the very specific milieu from which Raymond and her book emerged — a radical lesbian feminist theology deeply disappointed with the Catholic Church.

Episode 6: Perverts, Creeps and Priests!

Mon, 11 Sep 2023 22:58:21 GMT

It's Moira and Adrian's version of a classic Cher-song: Perverts, Creeps and Priests! This episode takes deep dives into three texts that illuminate contemporary "crisis-of-masculinity"-debates: those that invoke the Bible, those that invoke science, and those that invoke only their own proudly flaunted neuroses. Where are these right-wing discourses about masculinity in agreement, where are they in conflict? Everyone agrees men are in crisis -- who gets to decide what exactly the crisis is?

Episode 5: Crisis of Masculinity

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 17:32:25 GMT

Moira leads Adrian through the endless discourse about the "crisis of masculinity" -- where it comes from, what has motivated it in the past, and why we're having it again. Together, the two of them take a long tour de dudes: from Silicon Valley to Mike Pence's bedroom, from the Old West to Jordan Peterson's couch. What is the unique state of emergency that men find themselves in? Is it real? And why is it -- once again -- supposed to be feminism's fault?

Episode 4: Fag Hag with Moira and Adrian

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 07:01:01 GMT

Ever since the 1960s, the figure of the “fag hag” — a (mostly) straight woman hanging around gay men — has been a mainstay in and around queer spaces. As a woman who refused heterosexuality she aroused the ire of social conservatives, but also critiques from within the community. In this episode, Moira and Adrian investigate: why did conservatives hate the hag? How radical was this figure really? And is she still a thing?

Episode 3: Susan Sontag with Merve Emre

Mon, 24 Jul 2023 07:01:12 GMT

Susan Sontag (1933- 2004) was a writer, critic and activist, one who isn’t thought of (and didn’t think of herself) as conservative. In this episode, your hosts talk with Prof. Merve Emre to think through Sontag’s writing on gender and on the women’s movement. How do Sontag’s leeriness about identity and identification, her ambivalent attitudes to bodies, sex and beauty, and her elitism land in today’s political climate and landscape?

Episode 2: Midge Decter with Matt Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 22:07:33 GMT

Midge Decter (1927-2022) has often been called the "grandmother of neoconservatism" -- hers was in some ways a pretty classic trajectory, from New Deal liberalism to profound unease with the social movements of the 1960s, to the center of the conservative movement and Republican politics. But unlike most of her fellow neocons, Midge Decter always framed her trajectory quite openly in terms of gender: repulsion from a certain kind of women's liberation, and attraction to a certain kind of masculinity. In this episode, Moira and Adrian delve into the weird, cantankerous world of Midge Decter with the co-hosts of Know Your Enemy, Matt Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell.

Episode 1: Gay Marriage with Moira and Adrian

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 21:58:37 GMT

For their inaugural episode, Moira and Adrian delve into right-wing (ahem) contributions to the gay marriage debate. Ten years ago the Supreme Court decided Windsor v. US and Hollingsworth v. Perry, which together spelled the beginning of the end of the gay marriage debate (gay marriage would be established nationwide in Obergefell v. Hodges two years later). But did the issue really go away? How did the terms of the debate back then on the right influence today's moral panics, how do they motivate a far-right Supreme Court?

In Bed With The Right - Trailer!

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 17:24:52 GMT

Get a sneak-peek at the all new, upcoming show In Bed With The Right hosted by Adrian Daub and Moira Donegan.