In Bed With The Right

Latest Episodes:

Episode 91 -- The Mailbag Episode, Part 1 Aug 19, 2025

Show notes

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 Aug 13, 2025

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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 Aug 05, 2025

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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 Jul 29, 2025

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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 Jul 22, 2025

Show notes

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 Jul 08, 2025

Show notes

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 Jun 24, 2025

Show notes

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 Jun 17, 2025

Show notes

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 May 28, 2025

Show notes

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 May 20, 2025

Show notes

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)