In Bed With The Right

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.

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

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.

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"

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.

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

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 tenth installment covers December 1 to December 31, 1933. In this episode, Moira and Adrian close out the story of this terrible year, draw out some overall observations at the end of about 30 hours of recording and 15 hours of podcast, and trace the fates of some of the protagonists of this series after 1933. Thank you for staying with this series for hours and hours of this complicated and depressing story!

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

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.

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

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)

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 ninth installment covers November 1 to November 30, 1933. It's about democracy after democracy. On November 12, the Nazis held an election, the second after Hitler had become chancellor, but the first since the Enabling Laws had fully established a dictatorship. This episode is about this bizarre exercise, about how average Germans experienced it, and about how émigrés reacted to a country that was fusing more and more with its ruling regime.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!

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.

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.

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.

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 eighth installment covers October 1 to October 31, 1933. It's all about the economy: about how the Nazis tackled (or pretended to tackle) the economic problems in Germany; how monetary policy interlocked with rearmament; and how everyday Germans experienced the economy versus the Nazi party and the elites.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 EconomyAlbrecht Ritschl, "Deficit Spending in the Nazi Recovery, 1933-1938"Götz Aly, Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare StateChristiane Kuller, Bürokratie und Verbrechen: Antisemitische Finanzpolitik und Verwaltungspraxis im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland

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!

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"

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.)

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